Blade Kin Read online

  They were so black, they seemed to swallow the darkness, except for small crows sewn from silver thread that gleamed in the moonlight.

  Tull lurched back, as if the moccasins were rattlesnakes. “No!”

  “I want you to wear the moccasins of the Spirit Walker,” Chaa said. “The power of the shamans runs in your blood. Yet old laws require me to tell you this: once you take a Spirit Walk, you can never go home.”

  Chaa offered the moccasins, but Tull would not touch them.

  “I wouldn’t make a good Spirit Walker.” Tull tried to sound calm. “I’ve seen your eyes after you Spirit Walk. When you walk, you taste the grief and rage and fears of other men, and your eyes become vacant, lost. I … I don’t think I could eat the pain of a thousand men. I don’t think I could.”

  Chaa sat for a time letting Tull consider. “When you joined the tribe of the Pwi, I gave you your true name, Laschi Chamepar, Path of the Crushed Heart. Your heart will be crushed whether you become a Spirit Walker or not.”

  You could save me, Tull thought. You could keep my heart from being crushed.

  “I cannot save you,” Chaa said, answering the unspoken thought. “If you run from this future, it will simply overwhelm you.”

  Tull didn’t want to hear these words. “How do I know you are right? You play games with people’s lives! You look into their future, then trade their hopes and dreams like coins to buy … to buy, I don’t know what.”

  “To buy peace for as many people as possible,” Chaa said, “just as I can give you peace. I do what I must. I traded my sons’ lives for yours; now I ask you to give a life back to me. Bringing the sea serpents back was a worthy goal. But I want more from you. You must become a Spirit Walker. If you do not fulfill your potential, then my sacrifices will have been for nothing.”

  Tull looked at Chaa and wondered how Zhopila could still love him, still sleep with him at nights, knowing that Chaa had sent her sons to die in Tull’s behalf. Tull held his arms around his legs, curled almost in a fetal position. “You talk as if becoming a Spirit Walker is a big thing—yet look at the armies of Craal. Look at the Creators plotting our destruction. What have your powers gained?”

  Chaa stared into Tull’s eyes. “Now we talk of mysteries, things I would not openly reveal. You cannot guess what we have gained, Tull. You could not imagine this world without us. Ayaah, we’ve strong enemies—sorcerers among the Blade Kin, even enemies left from the dream-time in the Land of Shapes. They’ve brought our world to the edge of ruin. But we withstand them.”

  Tull put his hands over his eyes. Like a dog circling its bed he returned to the previous argument. “Once I take a Spirit Walk, you say I can never go home. But I left my body when I climbed the Tower of the Worm. Perhaps I am already forever lost to myself!”

  “Or perhaps when you search for yourself, someone better will be found,” Chaa said. “I am not the same young man I was before my father took me on my first Spirit Walk, just as the oak is no longer an acorn. I’ve walked the lives of ten thousand men. Does that make me less a man, or am I now a man ten thousand times over? Sometimes I walk a man’s future and see that he will be destroyed by pain, and I know that when I wake, I will feel his worms in my head. It is inevitable. But I can teach you to bear such pain. As a Spirit Walker, you will learn the flavors of men. For every person whose life is vinegar, you can find a person whose life is honey. Tull, wear the moccasins of the Spirit Walker!”

  Tull closed his eyes, rubbed his face.

  “You are right to be afraid, Tull. If you were not afraid of the gift, you would be too stupid to be worthy of it. I’ve sacrificed my children to bring about a better future. You know that you may be required to do the same, and you ask yourself: How much guilt can I bear?”

  Guilt, that was the crux of it, Tull realized. To know the future was to become responsible for it, just as Chaa had become responsible for it.

  For a moment Chaa took a pine cone, absently wrote with it on the ground. “You are a good man. I think you will follow the laws written in your heart. I have given two lives for you, and in time you will see that now that a gift has been given, a gift must be returned. This is a natural thing.”

  The young Pwi in camp started to sing and abruptly stopped. A commotion began, people shouted. Darrissea Frolic came rushing to the grotto. She stood at the top of the small ridge for a moment, her blue cloak flapping in the moonlight as she peered into the shadow.

  “What?” Chaa asked.

  “You had better get up here, Chaa,” Darrissea said. “There’s a big gray bird out here, like nothing I’ve ever seen, and it is asking for the town of Smilodon Bay.”

  The Spirit Walker rose to his feet, nervously dusted the redwood needles from his pants. Chaa said to Tull, “It seems that the future is thrust upon us, whether we have seen it or not.”

  Tull rushed from the grotto to the campfire, and there he found the young people of the village standing next to a huge gray bird as large as the great-horned dragon. The beast stood six feet at the shoulders, yet it was no ordinary bird. It had the face of a woman, young and beautiful, with wide-set gray eyes and strong lips. Fine downy feathers covered her cheeks.

  The Pwi boys stood close, almost daring to touch her, and Tull’s heart pounded.

  “Back!” Tull shouted. Some boys turned to look at him, and Tull shouted again, “Run! Get back!”

  The boys stepped back tentatively. Chaa followed Tull. “Get back or she’ll kill you!” Chaa said menacingly, and the boys leapt away at the Spirit Walker’s warning.

  Anorath had a gun propped against a tree, a pump-action smooth bore that fired a slug large enough to rip open a woolly rhino; he grabbed it, covered the bird. Other boys pulled their swords and kutows. The bird sat on the ground, wings folded, feathers unruffled. Her huge gray eyes were empty, staring ahead as if dazed.

  “What happened to her?” Tull asked, wondering why the bird was so still.

  Anorath said, “She asked where Smilodon Bay is, and asked for Phylomon the Starfarer. We told her that Smilodon Bay is near, but that the Starfarer is gone. She stopped moving and now just sits. What should we do?”

  Chaa shrugged, looked at Tull. “You tell them.”

  Tull studied the bird. Her face, her wings. She was far larger than the deadly gray birds he’d seen up north, and she had a human face rather than a beak. He didn’t know if she was dangerous.

  Perhaps the Creators had given her lips and a voice so she could deliver a message? Her head was smaller than a human’s. He wondered how much intelligence lurked behind those eyes and decided to test her.

  He whispered to Anorath, “Ready your gun. If she moves, shoot her.” He grabbed a kutow from a boy, stepped close to the bird.

  This is foolish, he told himself. If you flirt with death, she will cleave to you. He looked back at Chaa for advice but the Spirit Walker just shrugged.

  “What do you want?” Tull asked, his mouth dry. She didn’t answer. “What town do you seek?”

  The messenger’s eyes suddenly focused on Tull, and he cringed. She dug her great talons into the ground and said, “Smilodon Bay. I seek Smilodon Bay.”

  “This town that you see is Smilodon Bay,” Tull said, gesturing expansively at the redwoods. The gray bird studied the trees quizzically, as if inspecting them.

  “And who do you seek here?” Tull asked.

  The bird sank her talons into the thick humus, readjusted her wings. “Phylomon the Starfarer.”

  “I am Phylomon the Starfarer,” Tull said.

  The gray bird tensed, like a hawk ready to pounce, but studied his feet, ran her eyes up over his body from toe to head, obviously mystified. “Phylomon the Starfarer has blue skin,” the bird said.

  “I am blue,” Tull answered.

  “You are not blue!” the bird screeched, flapping her wings in anger, glaring out over the crowd of young men that circled her.

  Tull gestured to one young Pwi boy who had painted his face blue. “
You are right! I am not blue, and I am not Phylomon. That man is Phylomon.”

  The bird batted her wings. Her eyes fixed on the young man. She screeched and leapt into the air making gagging sounds as if she would vomit.

  “Kill it! Kill it now!” Tull shouted, and Anorath fired, catching the bird’s right wing. The bird spun to the ground, tilted her head up to see, and Tull leapt forward and slammed the kutow into her head, splitting her skull.

  Yet something swelled the dead bird’s throat, crawling up. Tull slammed his kutow into its neck.

  A terrific jolt of electricity arced up from the wound, blinding him, hurling him back. He laid on the ground, dazed, the wooden shaft of the kutow smoldering in his hand, the soles of his moccasins smoking.

  Chaa rushed forward wielding a brand from the fire, and a eel-like creature wiggled from the dead bird’s throat, ripping out her esophagus. The creature was huge, at least three feet long and nine-inches tall at the back. Its eyes were the same pale blue as its skin.

  Chaa held the flame in front of the eel’s nose, and the creature stopped, as if blinded. Chaa shouted to the boys, “You young men get back! Get Back! There is more danger here than you can imagine!”

  He eased toward the fire. The eel followed the flaming brand, sliding like a snake. It twisted its head from side to side, but its pale blue eyes seemed not to see the boys. It followed the flame.

  When Chaa reached the bonfire, he tossed the brand into its heart. The great eel rushed forward to strike.

  It wriggled into the flames and began to writhe, circling within the fire, seemingly unable to leave. A small bolt of lightning arced out of the creature, split a log by the fire, and yet the beast continued to race in circles through the flames.

  Behind Chaa, the Pwi gasped. The dying eel whipped about, the muscles in its back straining like cords, scattering coals across the ground, plunging its long rasping tongue into flaming coals at the heart of the fire.

  Tull watched that tongue, recalled how other eels in the north had attacked—flicking their tongues into the brain stems of their human victims, taking control of their bodies.

  Chaa went to Anorath, took the gun and began shooting into the great eel. Holes ripped into its side, holes large enough to put a fist through, yet the wounds healed even as they watched. He shot off all rounds, reloaded, shot, and reloaded until he ran out of bullets.

  The eel spun in a frenzy, looking for an enemy to strike, blind to anything but flames. Tull’s head cleared. Even with fifteen bullets in it, the eel did not slow.

  Chaa shouted, “Use your spear to push the logs back into a circle. Throw sticks into the fire to keep it hot—or the creature will see you! Do not let the beast touch your sticks!” The boys moved forward cautiously.

  Tull swallowed, listened to the sizzle and pop of the beast in the fire as the boys worked.

  Chaa whispered to Tull. “The eel has a skin like Phylomon the Starfarer’s. The Creators made this one especially for him. You could not have killed it. Phylomon himself would have died here.”

  Tull saw that Chaa’s hands were shaking even though his voice sounded calm.

  Fava walked up beside Tull, holding Wayan, who slept in spite of all the noise. Tull asked Chaa, “Did you know the bird would come?”

  “No. I suspected an attack, but sometimes it rains even on a Spirit Walker. I saw eels like these in my Spirit Walk, and I’ve touched their minds, for they are living creatures. Fire is their weakness. It draws them, yet blinds them.”

  Chaa supervised the boys until the blue eel finally rolled to its back and lay twitching. Then he told the Pwi about the Creators’ treachery, how they’d killed the sea serpents with their lampreys, and how they planned to do more.

  He made the Creators’ plans sound like a small thing, the schemes of children, and none of the Pwi doubted that Chaa had seen how to foil the Creators’ plot.

  Tull had already brought the sea serpents back from Craal, defeating part of the Creators’ plans. Now when Phylomon the Starfarer returned, he would lead them north to destroy the Creators.

  Tull stood with Fava and listened, not to the Spirit Walker, but to a fox barking in the distance and the wind rushing through the redwoods. He looked up through the black branches at the sky, and Fava nudged him.

  She said, “Now I know why your eyes have seemed to gaze a thousand miles away. You have been keeping many secrets.”

  “I did not want to ruin the kwea of our wedding,” Tull said. “I want you to always be able to look back and think of it as a happy time, not mingled with fear.”

  Fava got up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Tull took Wayan from her.

  They began ambling home, and when Tull glanced back, Chaa leaned over the fire, ringed by Pwi.

  He was squatting over the carcass of the eel with a knife, skinning it. Chaa had many hunting trophies in his house—teeth of dinosaurs and lions, hides from bears—but Tull imagined the pale blue eel skin as a rug on the Spirit Walker’s floor, and thought it an odd trophy.

  Tull carried Wayan back to the cabin. All through his walk, Tull held the small boy and wondered what the future would bring for Wayan.

  Perhaps he would someday be carried away as a slave to Bashevgo, or perhaps the boy would die at the hands of the Creators. Maybe he would live here in town and be happy, marry well, grow old and die among friends. Yet that seemed too much to hope.

  It had been only three weeks since Tull had taken Wayan from their father, rescued the child so that he should not be abused as Tull had.

  And in Tull’s mind a little voice whispered, When you took Wayan to raise as your own son, you took him because you wanted to promise him a future.

  When Tull reached the cabin, he laid Wayan in bed with Fava, set the fire, then went outside to think. He looked out over the waters at Smilodon Bay. The town below swept around him in a bowl shape, the gray stone houses hidden among the shadows of the redwoods. Pale lights from fires shone through some windows, and the light of Freya—one of the two smaller moons—made the smoke hanging over the chimneys gleam as if pale white ribbons floated above the town.

  Overhead the stars seemed to want to burn a hole in the darkness. A red drone warship flamed like a comet on the horizon. Tull stood, tasting the cool night air on his tongue, and decided, Tomorrow I will become a Spirit Walker.

  ***

  Chapter 6: Eyes of Bashevgo

  Garamon Goodman, the mayor of Smilodon Bay, slept fitfully the night of Tull’s return. He kept tossing in his blankets so that they wound around him and pulled off of his wife.

  At four in the morning someone knocked at his door, softly, three times. Then he heard a faint scratching. Eyes of Bashevgo, he realized—a member of the secret arm of the Blade Kin, who worked here in the Rough.

  He hurried to open the door. “What do you want?”

  At the door stood Kelvin Bywater a local glass maker. Garamon had known Kelvin for thirty years, but had never known him to be a member of the Secret Eye.

  “I thought you should know,” Kelvin said. “Chaa and some of your local boys have just sworn to overthrow Bashevgo.”

  Garamon stood in the doorway, confused. “Bashevgo? They can’t be serious!”

  Kelvin whispered, “They’re serious, friend.”

  “The Pwi aren’t that naïve!”

  “The mute that Tull brought back today has managed to be quite an agitator. Your Pwi would march tonight, if Chaa asked them to.”

  “Well then,” Garamon whispered. He wrung his hands in the darkness. “We can’t have that, can we? We must keep the merchandise pacified. So we shall have to agitate the agitator.”

  ***

  Chapter 7: The Attraction of Small Predators

  General Mahkawn lay in bed that morning in a stone shack on the isle of Bashevgo, and listened: outside roosters crowed down the street, and a few blocks farther a pig squealed as it died in the market, the sounds muted by a rain that fell to a street so cold that the droplets gave an
odd tinkling when they impacted, then skittered across the frozen cobblestones.

  Mahkawn closed his eyes and tried to soak in that sound. Learning sounds, tuning himself to sounds, was an old habit he’d learned when he’d lost his right eye.

  Beside him, Pirazha stirred in bed, throwing her naked leg over him. She opened her eyes, raised on one elbow, and glanced out the window. “I must get up. My master will need bread.”

  “No,” Mahkawn said. “Don’t go to work. Tell him that you were breeding with a Blade Kin. It is your privilege.”

  As a general among the Blade Kin, it was Mahkawn’s right to select any slave he wanted to sleep with. Her master would not begrudge the time that Mahkawn spent between her legs.

  “You don’t want me to have to explain this, do you? What if he sends someone to look for me? I told him last week that I slept with a Blade Kin, and he asked your name. He suspects that you have been coming around again.”

  “No,” Mahkawn said. “I don’t want you to tell.” He did not need to ask if she’d given his name. She would have kept silent, lied, done anything. She could not let it be known that she was sleeping regularly with the same man.

  Pirazha rubbed her face into the thick hair of Mahkawn’s chest and sighed. She ground her hips into him. “I can stay for a few more minutes.” She bit his shoulder hard enough to bruise it.

  Mahkawn petted her sagging breast, ran his finger under the curves. Three of my sons have suckled from her dark nipples, he thought, and the kwea he felt from them, the beauty of his own times lying with this aging Thrall, smote him.

  Breathing in, he could smell the yeast from the bakery upon her, as if she herself were bread, a staple. Pirazha’s hips were wide from giving birth, and Mahkawn stared at her face, her thin orange hair, eyes that glowed a deep gold.

  Like all Neanderthals, her skin was pulled tight over the smooth bones of her skull. Her only wrinkles were thin traces, as if cobwebs lay at the corner of her eyes.