Blade Kin Read online

  Anorath stopped for a long drink of beer. A boy pushed another mug full of beer into Tull’s hands and Tull downed it quickly.

  Anorath continued. “The humans began picking peaches. They were only humans who had come to steal the same peaches. They worked several minutes, filling some large baskets—and friends let me say; it’s wrong for us Pwi to always pick the fruit; with their tiny, clever hands the humans worked faster than Tull or I.

  “They began at the bottom and picked the tree as they climbed. When they were almost on us, Tull grabbed one human by the neck and shouted in English, ‘Now I’ve caught your ass, you thief!’

  “The human squealed like a pig and dropped his peaches. He fell from the tree, and they both fled so fast that when we got down we found a shoe left on the ground. Tull and I took all their peaches and ran home.”

  The Pwi laughed, and Tull smiled. “I’d forgotten about stealing those peaches,” Tull said. “That was a good time.”

  “Ayaah, I had almost forgotten, too,” Darrissea said from across the fire. “I’m the human girl who fell from the tree—though I’d say that rather than squeal like a pig, I squeaked like a rat!”

  Anorath nearly dropped his cup in surprise.

  Fava and the other Pwi laughed. Tull had never told anyone about stealing those peaches. He felt a great sense of peace and realized that he had been drinking too much and now he was drunk; yet he was drunk on more than beer. He was drunk with kwea, a deep sense of satisfaction, of merriment, at being with old friends.

  Tull sighed. “It will never be like this again,” he said, “with all of us here. All of us drunk and laughing.”

  Fava hugged Tull. “Just because we’re married, it doesn’t mean the world will end. We’ll still get together with our friends.” Fava turned to Darrissea. “You must come and visit us soon.”

  Tull looked across the fire, smiling a melancholy smile. The slow gravitational wind hissed through the tops of the redwoods, signifying that Thor would set shortly. Tull said, “I hope you’re right, Fava. May we all get together with our friends and laugh often.”

  Darrissea nodded her head solemnly, looked at the ground, mist in her dark eyes.

  “The peaches were good,” Tull said, “if that consoles you. They tasted sweeter for having been stolen twice.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed the fruits of my labor,” Darrissea said. “I forgive you.”

  In Darrissea’s eyes Tull saw only sincerity. “You always speak the truth. I like that in you.”

  “It’s a bad habit. One that I’m trying to break.”

  “Don’t break the habit,” Tull said. “I find it entertaining.”

  Darrissea cocked her head, questioningly.

  “I remember when we were young,” Tull said. “Your father was still alive, working with freedom fighters up at Storm Hold. He had come home for a summer, and you were mad at him. You stood in front of Moon Dance Inn, yelled at him, ‘You know, if you stick your ear up to your ass, you can hear the ocean.’ Everyone laughed, but your father slapped you. Now that I think about it, I’ve always enjoyed watching you. You can say the most amazing things.”

  Darrissea raised an eyebrow. “Which entertained more, the remark or the beating?”

  “The fight was fun at the time, but I still laugh at your joke all these years later.”

  “I remember getting hit, but I’d forgotten why my father hit me. You know, you remember those words simply because it is something you wanted to say to your own father. You were always a quiet rebel, full of anger. I could see it in your eyes. I was always a noisy rebel, a dumb one with a bloody nose.”

  “You had the courage to speak the truth,” Tull said.

  “And you had the wisdom to keep your mouth shut.”

  A log broke in the fire, and a shower of cinders spiraled upward. Tull raised his mug. “To rebellion, and truth, and martyrdom.”

  Darrissea raised her mug in return and shook her head, “To all but the last.”

  The old Neanderthal, Uknai, suddenly stirred in his coat of rags. He grunted softly, got up, and went to the keg of beer where a lantern lay, then set the lantern next to the fire and grunted, gesturing for everyone to come near.

  Uknai carefully unscrewed the lid to his map case and all around the fire, people drew close. He pulled out a thin piece of cloth, unrolling it gently on the ground.

  Tull wondered what would be on the map, but as the crowd of Neanderthals drew in close, he could see little over their backs except a flash of color, while those nearby gasped.

  Tull pushed his way forward; the cloth did not have a map drawn on it, but a painting, and something in it took his breath.

  It was a large painting—a landscape of a bleak plain. In a junkyard littered with broken guns and swords was a pale green swath of land with some tired daisies where a young Pwi man and a Pwi woman made love. But above them mountains towered, and carved in the purple-gray stone were the greedy faces of the Slave Lords of Bashevgo: ruined old men slavering and leering, as if they would eat the young lovers, or as if they pondered something more evil.

  An ingenious use of contrasting colors, a grandeur in design, made the portrait stunning. Tull could feel the kwea of the art, as if the painting itself were vibrating and causing movements throughout the crowd. He seldom got that feeling from mere objects—yet some pieces of art carried it, held more power than they should. Uknai’s painting was that way—an icon of power.

  The crowd around Uknai quieted, and the Pwi became solemn. Tull realized that there was little beauty in the picture. Only horror. Pain and suffering.

  And the beauty that existed in the lovers upon the green swath of lawn was all overshadowed by the horror of the Slave Lords. The picture was a story Tull did not want to hear, yet he could not take his eyes from the painting.

  Uknai pulled out a second canvas, spread it before them and once again the Neanderthals breathed in awe.

  The young Pwi woman lay tied to a beautiful bed carved of ivory, gazing out of the picture, and tiny crows flew from her mouth. A handsome human straddled her voluptuous naked body, smiling curiously. The human seemed intent on the pain and terror etched in his victim’s face. He wore a shirt of golden butterfly wings, and golden rings adorned his ears, and everything about him spoke of wealth and grace. Behind him a string of other beds lay, each holding a dead woman.

  In his right hand he tenderly fingered the Pwi woman’s throat, but everywhere there were crows flying in the background, so that the background became only a mass of black crows, and on a distant hill, Uknai sat by a wall of stone while a crow perched above him, speaking into his ear.

  Tull wondered if the picture represented a real rape, or if it represented the rape of Uknai’s people in Bashevgo. He listened to the murmurs of the Neanderthals, heard their unspoken outrage. Uknai was a master artist, playing his audience carefully, a man of wit and passion and skill, and his works stunned the Pwi.

  A third picture showed Uknai running down a city street, a small and insignificant creature charging full tilt between tall buildings of stone that opened like a dark throat, a bloody knife in one hand, a child’s doll made of reeds in another.

  From every window, from every darkened passageway, eyes looked out, and from above, one could see that the world was a maze of dark passages with no escape. Tull knew then that this was Uknai’s story, his personal story, and not a symbolic retelling of the horrors of all the slaves in Bashevgo. Some of the Neanderthals looked at the bloody knife, grunted, “Well done!” for they were happy to see that Uknai had killed a Slave Lord.

  Uknai reached into his case and pulled out a final painting, and the crowd moved forward. Before Tull could see it, he heard snarls from those in close. The picture was painted in blacks and purples, and showed Uknai, broken, bruised and frightened, sitting on a hill of skulls, clutching the child’s doll; above him was a cage of bones, without a key or lock. Dancing through the sky, ghouls with grave clothes leered down, and floating in
the sky among them were men in red armor, men without faces, and two of them stooped, as if having just set Uknai in the cage.

  The hill, the ghouls, the cage of bones, Uknai’s vacant and hopeless eyes staring out. Anorath drew the lantern nearer, so that everyone could see, and all the young Neanderthals frowned. Tull had heard rumors of the Cage of Bones, where Neanderthals sentenced to death for murdering a Slave Lord were sent. Rumor said there was no escape, no exit.

  Tull’s heart pounded, and all his world narrowed to Uknai’s eyes, staring out.

  Uknai pointed at the man in the cage and groaned tonguelessly, pointed to himself. “That is me in that cage,” he was saying, and pointed helplessly at the men in red armor.

  “Those are Palace Guards of the Blade Kin,” Fava said, pointing at the men dancing through the sky in red. “Like the men who were chasing Uknai.”

  The dark-purple nighttime, the yellow bones, the flying Slave Lords and their demonic servants.

  Yet the pain in Uknai’s eyes is what captivated Tull. The painting was beautiful, yet it horrified Tull to the very depth of his soul. Here was a man who had lived in a chasm so fast and deep that Tull could not fathom it, while Tull and his friends stayed here in the relative freedom and safety of the Rough.

  Tull thought idly, For every one of us Pwi living here in the wild, a thousand live in slavery in Craal or Bashevgo. All my life, I’ve enjoyed my freedom, never considering how the vast hordes live.

  It shamed him. Darrissea leaned in among the crowd and touched the last canvas, caressed a corner as if judging the worth of it, and she looked up at Tull, rage in her dark eyes.

  She held it up for all to see, then whistled for attention. “This is Bashevgo!” she said. “This is our future. All our lives we’ve been hiding out here in the Rough, living in this wilderness of sleep. We all know that someday the slavers will come, and some of you talk of escaping to Hotland. But I don’t see many places left to hide!” She pulled a knife from the sheath on her hip drew it across her wrist. “I swear to God by my blood that I shall free Bashevgo before I die!”

  She raised her bleeding wrist for all to witness. Tull thought, She must be drunk. Old Uknai grabbed the knife from Darrissea, drew it across his own wrist, silently held it up.

  Tull’s heart pounded, blood thundering in his ears. He had never heard talk like this, open talk of war, and he marveled that an old man with a handful of paintings could hold such sway over them.

  Yet the rage was in him, the pent anger over what the Slave Lords had done. Tull grabbed the knife, drew it across his own wrist, and shouted, “I swear to God by my blood, that I shall free Bashevgo before I die!”

  The young Pwi of town watched as if they were three madmen.

  Fava said, “You can’t expect a hundred Pwi to take on the Slave Lords of Bashevgo!” Tull looked in her eyes and saw not fear, but rage. She was angry at him.

  “Are you so certain?” a soft voice asked in Pwi from behind them.

  ***

  Chapter 5: The Prophet

  Tull turned to see Chaa at the edge of the clearing, in the shadows. He stepped forward so that moonlight fell on him. “Are you sure we cannot win—sixty thousand Pwi of the Rough against sixty million slaves and their lords? I’ve walked the paths of the future and know what I have seen.”

  Chaa strode purposefully toward the fire, stood next to Tull, raised his own ceremonial dagger and slit his wrist.

  He held it up for all to see. “I swear to God, I shall free Bashevgo!”

  Around the fire at Lake Perfect Mirror for a Blue Sky, a hundred half-drunk Pwi screamed in unison, cutting their wrists, so that their first war cry became a roar that echoed for miles above the trees.

  Amid the excitement Tull looked for Fava. She walked quietly to a tree, hugging Wayan, without joy in her face. He went to her and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “We’ve been married only for a few days, and already you talk of leaving me?”

  “I … didn’t think,” Tull said.

  All around them the young Pwi shouted and beat their chests, eyes shining in the light of the fires. Old Uknai stood among them, grinning. Little Wayan clung to Fava and looked around wildly. Tull hugged them both and found that Fava was sniffling.

  “I won’t go for a while,” Tull promised. “Not until summer at the earliest.”

  “You won’t go at all,” Fava said, and Tull started to protest. “We’ll go together. We’ll fight as man and wife.” Fava sat with her back against a redwood, holding Wayan and singing softly. Tull wanted to argue, but knew this was not the time.

  He sat with them for an hour, resting a hand on Fava’s knee. The camp quieted as the Pwi broke into small groups. Some young Pwi boys stripped and jumped into the cold lake, swimming in the darkness. Someone banged on a log, using it as a drum, and others played their shrill flutes. They sang an old Pwi song:

  When I was young and hollow,

  I hunted in wheat fields under starlight,

  And my feet left shadows in the white fields,

  And I was as empty as those shadows.

  When I was young and hollow,

  The girl I married had no beauty.

  She was breastless and lacked front teeth,

  And with her mother she ground bread dough.

  Now I am no longer hollow,

  For this woman fills me with beauty,

  In her smile I see white fields in starlight,

  And she gives me her breast as a pillow.

  Chaa came, sat beside Tull on his heels. “Come with me, Tull. We have things to discuss,” he said, grabbing Tull’s forearm.

  Tull tried to stand and found his right ankle numb, as often happened on cold nights. He limped off under a canopy of trees, into a deep grotto filled with trumpet shaped mushrooms. The two men sat facing each other on a carpet of musty redwood needles. The Spirit Walker leaned his head back, breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring to taste the night air.

  “You are nervous tonight,” Chaa said. “Why?”

  Tull considered. As Spirit Walker for the village, Chaa had traveled to the gates of death so that he could leave his body and connect his consciousness with Tull’s in a realm beyond time, and thus walk both Tull’s past and future. Nothing was hidden from Chaa. “You know what troubles me.”

  Chaa laughed. “You test my skills? You hoped to wait until Phylomon and Theron Scandal returned from Craal before warning people of the dangers they face. You fear the slavers, for they gather on our borders to the west. But you fear the Creators far more.”

  In the distance a young Pwi laughed on the lake and splashed water. Tull wrapped his arms around his knees. In his mind he returned to Craal, to the rocky coast at the Straits of Zerai where he, Theron Scandal, and Phylomon the Starfarer had separated. At the spawning ground of the great sea serpents they’d found serpents dead from parasites—pale lampreys with venomous mouths that fastened to the serpents’ gills.

  The stinging lampreys were driving the serpents mad, till they scratched out their own gills by rubbing against submerged rocks. Only the Creators, ancient breeding machines formed by the Starfarers, could have made the parasites. Yet long ago, the human Starfarers had formed the Creators to protect the environment. The idea that the Creators would purposely sabotage such a vital species did not make sense.

  But on the plains near the straits, Tull and Phylomon had also found some wild humans—half the size of normal humans—that could not speak, could not hunt or dress or fend for themselves. Instead they were animals, and it was obvious that the Creators had formed them.

  Yet the Creators also sent gray birds with lampreys in their gullet to attack the children. Only then had Phylomon guessed the truth: the Creators had formed the humans so they could practice their plans for genocide. Mankind had overextended, so the Creators intended to destroy mankind, wipe them from the planet. Phylomon and Scandal had stayed at Zerai to protect the small humans, move them to safety.

  “I know
how to fight men,” Tull offered, “but I do not know how to fight the Creators. Phylomon says he will raise an army when he returns. But I cannot imagine that it will be easy.”

  “Then it is good that we began building our army tonight,” Chaa said. “Still I do not know how to fight the Creators either.”

  Tull drew a breath in surprise. He’d always imagined that a Spirit Walker would know everything.

  “On my Spirit Walks, I have not seen the Creators, but I’ve connected to men who know of them. They are secretive, like great worms, and live deep in caves far to the north, but—they remain invisible to my mind. The Starfarers gave them bodies of flesh, but their brains are made of crystal. The Creators are machines. I can’t Spirit Walk their future. I can only guess their intent.”

  “Phylomon believes they will destroy us if we don’t kill them,” Tull said. “What do you think?”

  “They have little choice. The Creators were made to protect the land and its animals, but now the entire West is filled with people. The mammoth and woolly rhino have been hunted to oblivion beyond the White Mountains, as have other animals. For the Creators to obey the commands given by the Starfarers, they must reduce our numbers. But we have guns. If the Creators strike only to thin our numbers we would retaliate. They know that.

  “No, the Creators must wash us like dirt from a bowl and start over, replace us with humans and Pwi grown from their wombs—men so ignorant that they cannot build weapons to challenge them.”

  Tull sighed. “I was afraid that if I warned our people, it would cause a panic.”

  “Phylomon and Scandal will return soon,” Chaa said. “Let Phylomon bear the bad news,” he looked ahead as if staring at something others could not see. “You are young, with many concerns. You fear the Creators and the Slave Lords of Craal—but if you think, you will see that you fear only one thing: the future.

  “At your wedding you received many gifts, but I came to offer you one more. I offer you knowledge of the future.”

  Chaa shuffled his feet and Tull thought that he would now reveal a plan to destroy the Creators. It took Tull a moment to realize that the Spirit Walker was slipping off his moccasins. Chaa extended the moccasins to Tull.