Blade Kin (19 page)

Chapter 28: Moccasins of Fire

Tull watched a small mud house and surrounding orchard from a thicket of tall marsh grass, almost like the cattails of his home. Behind him a wide brown river flowed lazily.

The night was warm, almost as warm as summers in Smilodon Bay, and Tull had eaten little for days. Weariness wore at him, and he could feel his nerves shredding.

He didn’t know how much longer he could take the hunger, the running. His stomach was so tight, he knew he’d have to risk going into the open orchard to pick from a tree.

He had not seen a Blade Kin, not seen another person, for two nights now, yet in the past week of hiding near house after empty house, he’d come to realize that when he didn’t see the Blade Kin, he was in the most danger. In the week since he had jumped ship, he had not gotten ten miles from South Port.

He climbed the muddy riverbank, resisted the urge to crawl, and made his way to an orange tree. There he blacked out for a moment.

He woke to the sound of cicadas buzzing in the trees, and overhead a flock of geese honked, flying north in the moonlight. Thor was nearly full, and its cinnamon light basked the orchard, the empty mud house, and the fields of sweet potatoes beyond.

Tull gathered some fallen oranges, ate one. It was soft, rotting, and he looked to the window of the house, seeking better food. The windows were of stretched hide, ample to let in light, but not to see out of.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.
Probably waiting for its owner to return,
Tull thought.

The towns here had been cleaned out. No one left. Just a few animals.

Tull went to the door, walked through the rooms. There was a single cot with blankets thrown on it in a heap, yet otherwise the house was well kept, with worn furniture and the musky odor of an old woman—soured flesh, hair, dust.

In a pantry he found food—oats, dates, raisins, wine—he sat on the pantry floor to eat, yet even the act of sitting was too much for him and he fell in the attempt, sat for several moments, dazed.

“Hello?” an ancient voice crooned in Pwi, an old woman. “Is someone here?”

Tull sat for a moment, embarrassed. He had not thought to find anyone in this house, had imagined that the Blade Kin would have culled the owner.

“You there in the pantry, who do you think you’re hiding from?”

“I … no one, Mother,” Tull answered using the ancient Pwi term of respect.

“You should be hiding, Spirit Walker,” the woman said. “Atherkula seeks you.”

A chill ran down Tull’s spine, and he sat for a moment, dazed, wondering if this were some kind of trick. The door to the pantry opened, and an old woman stood in the faint moonlight. She was obviously Pwi, with a round face and deep, deep eyes. She walked carefully, as the frail will do.

“Come out of there, and I will make you some dinner.” She left the pantry door, went into the kitchen and started a fire in the oven.

As she struck a match, silver gleamed from the tops of her black moccasins. “You are a Spirit Walker,” Tull said. “What is your name, Mother?”

She lit a small twig in the fire, and it caught, burned brighter and brighter, and within a moment a small pile of twigs blazed.

Tull saw that her black moccasins did not bear the image of the crow, but of a dagger in front of a moon. The image shocked him, so that he stepped back, suddenly afraid, but for reasons he could not immediately recall.

The old woman laughed, and turned her head toward him, and Tull suddenly recognized her. “Yes,” she said, “you have met me before, in your dreams.”

“I saw you near the Worm Tower with Phylomon!”

“Yes, I rescued some women from their evil dreams.”

Tull was staring at her, puzzling at her moccasins. He closed his eyes, and he felt her there before him, like a burning light, ravaging and powerful.

“You are becoming wise, trying to see me with your spirit eyes. These moccasins on my feet are not those of a Spirit Walker—” the old woman said, “but of a Spirit Warrior.”

The old woman set a white ceramic kettle by the fire, then put a loaf of bread on the table with butter and honey, cheese and wine. “The butter and cheese will go bad soon,” she apologized. “We should eat them now.”

He drank from the wine—weak, fruity, a hint of vinegar. He sat and looked at the house of mud, nothing like the cabins in Smilodon Bay. He imagined that the mud would stay cooler than wood, an advantage here in the hot south.

Hunching, he closed his eyes, dizzy. Hot, hot south. Yet there was a cool night breeze stirring through the room, a breeze filled with freezing fingers. They stroked him, caressed his body, and the fingers were everywhere, tiny pinpricks of ice. They felt soothing.

“I know you are tired,” the old woman said, “but look at me.” The old woman pointed her finger, and Tull’s head was wrenched toward her. “I must speak to your spirit. Have you heard of the Okansharai, The Freer of All?”

“I have heard that in Craal and Bashevgo they dream of such a person and tell children tales. They hope he will free the slaves.”

“Not just the slaves, but their masters also,” the old woman said. “That is why he is called ‘The Freer of All.’”

“But the masters are already free,” Tull argued.

“Not free of ignorance, or fear, or cruelty,” the old woman said. “You’ve been bound by chains of fear. You know that chains that are invisible can be hardest to break. How could the Slave Lords be free when bound by such mighty chains?”

Tull did not answer. He sat remembering his father, Jenks. When Tull was a child, Jenks would go into a rage and so terrify Tull he could not move. Jenks would then beat Tull or chain him at will. Those had been mighty bonds indeed.

“Yes,” the old woman said. “You understand. Because the Okansharai himself is truly free, only he can free mankind.”

“Where is this Okansharai?” Tull asked.

The old woman knelt down, slipped off her moccasins. “Perhaps if you open your spirit eyes,” she said, “you will see him.”

She tossed the moccasins toward Tull, and they seemed to leap onto his feet, where they glowed like fire.

Tull knelt over, tried to pry them from his feet, staring into the symbols of moons and daggers.

He came awake with a start, still sitting in the pantry floor, food scattered around. He realized he had been dreaming, and he was so tired he could not rouse.

Tull closed his eyes, listened to his own labored breathing. His chest felt constricted. He forced himself to breathe deeply, slowly.

The room was becoming hotter, as if a wind blew from out of the desert, yet icy fingers fluttered at Tull’s back, lightly tickling, hinting that he would feel better outside.

He munched on some raisins, picked up the wine, wandered to the doorway, and looked out. Moonlight drowned out most of the stars.

A red drone had risen. The wind was blowing south, a strong and sudden gale, all blowing south.

South,
Tull thought.
South is good
. The icy fingers nudged his back, and he began walking south, heedless of whether there might by any Blade Kin. He closed his eyes, and saw the world even from behind his lids.

Tull raised his hand. It had turned to a pale gelatin the color of ivory, and within the ivory clot of his soul, lightning danced, yet otherwise the world seemed much the same. Only colors had changed—the orange trees and grass shone faintly purple, the night sky was deeper black.

Resisting the urge to walk south, Tull stopped. The wind whipped at him viciously, hissing through the orchard. Oranges plopped to the ground and rolled past, and Tull hunched down, put his hands over his face.

The howling wind carried words, “Come. Come!”

A voice, strange and compelling, drew him south as the storm whistled in his hair. Tull tried to stop, but the wind blew fiercer, colder, and he grudgingly took one step south, then another, and another, only hoping to escape the cold.

With hands shielding his face, Tull stopped and concentrated on opening his spirit eyes. Suddenly the world turned to stone, cracking and breaking, an infinite number of possibilities.

He stood in the shelter of his wall, a small fortress among the red sandstone, as if he were in Smilodon Bay, while whipping tentacles of light tore at the wall, pulling it down stone by stone.

“My future,” Tull thought, “they are demolishing my future.”

He suddenly realized that he was under attack.

He raised himself above the wall to see who would do this and found that he was still in South Bay.

He could see the faint purple shadows of the orange trees, and marveled, for he’d never seen the spirits of trees before. The oranges themselves were white and glowing, nebulous orbs. A tentacle whipped out of the distance and snatched a stone from his shelter.

A cat hunting among the fields shone like a blazing star. Everywhere, everywhere, on the edge of his vision, the spirits of men shone like a river of stars.

Dozens of tentacles stretched forward across the miles, grabbing for the stones of his sanctuary, pulling them down. And at last Tull grasped a stone, tried to hold it.

Across the fields and river, as if blown by the wind, hundreds of flaming spirits rushed toward him.

They were blinding white, without color, as if they had no clots to their souls, and Tull knew they were not living beings.

They circled his little fortress of stone so that he stood in the center of a blinding tornado, and all about him the lights whipped around madly, and the cold wind blew.

There are evil things in the Land of Shapes,
Tull remembered,
ancient powers without name.

Tull wanted to run or hide, but his spirit stayed put.

It knows its own powers, its own limitations,
Chaa had told him. Tull realized he was trapped. Something in him cried out for Fava, and a single thread of the lightning of his soul whipped away far to the north, and he touched Fava, felt her.

She was dreaming, and Tull knew she was heading to Bashevgo in the hopes of rescuing him.

Tull looked to the south where colored lights glimmered on the horizon like smoldering gems. Tull would not have noticed them at all, but one among them was powerful, a brilliant black flame.

It discerned his gaze, and came striding through the air—Atherkula.

The dead gathered around Tull, whipping faster and faster. Tull tried to shield himself from Atherkula’s probing tendrils, tendrils of darkness, but it was hard.

Tull’s strength was failing him, his will. He concentrated upon a distant time, a distant place, so Atherkula, free from the dimensions of time or space, would follow the false trail.

Tull closed his eyes and tried to recall the meadow where he had played as a child, alive with golden buttercups and wild garlic. Black-and-yellow bumble bees clumsily touched from flower to flower, and badgers snuffled in their dens.

Yet the overwhelming force behind Atherkula’s attack made it difficult. A tendril of icy darkness shot from Atherkula as the sorcerer probed, and Tull watched in fascination as the black tendril grasped one squiggling light within him, held the lightning of his soul and pulled straight.

Then dozens of Atherkula’s tendrils reached for him, probing.

Tull tried to flee, and the lightning of his soul danced madly, evading the tendrils that sought him, held him.

The battle was long and gruesome, the light of his soul flickering far faster than he could see, yet each time Atherkula snagged a frond of lightning, Tull found that he could not pull it back, could not retrieve it, for the dead would grasp it too, so that hundreds of tentacles would take him.

Tull viewed the whole scene with a growing dispassion, knowing that he was watching some form of spiritual rape, that whatever happened, he would not escape this whole.

The air thrummed around him as the dead gathered, held him, and at last Atherkula pulled all twenty-two tendrils of light out straight, and matched them in pairs. They cinched tight, and Tull felt his feet rise from the ground, knew he hovered in the air, and then the dead fluttered around and beneath him, carrying him.

Tull concentrated on the smell of wild garlic, on a badger den where he had once lost a coin playing in the dirt, and cried out in his heart, “Please.”

The lights that held him twisted, slamming him down toward the red sandstone, punishing him for his feeble attempts at escape.

Tull’s head bounced off stones; still Atherkula held him. Tull imagined touching a flower, and still Atherkula clung tight.

Atherkula whispered, “I hold you by the fires of your soul. Sprout more fires if you like. I will take them, too.”

Tull tried to do as he said, tried to sprout more tentacles. He thought perhaps he could escape somewhere, fight off Atherkula, but the tiny fires did not respond to his attempts. Instead, he floated slowly on the wind over the countryside, toward the glimmering living souls that burned like gems—an army of Blade Kin.

***