The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (18 page)

“Would it not be reasonable,” spoke the elegant woman to Siam’s right, “to ask this visitor for evidence of the strange and worrisome events he describes?”

In the whisperings from behind him, Alan now caught her name: Kehloke. He read the meaning as “swan-like.”

“What proof can lies and treachery offer!” scoffed Kawkaw.

Kemtuk countered, “Did he not learn to use the soul eye to speak our language in the few hours he spent in my company?”

“What spy would not acquire some use of our language before coming among his enemies? Is it not evidence of the most perfidious planning? Have a care,
Kemtuk Lapeep, that you do not find yourself tainted. For we have seen how readily you profane the old ways in bringing these huloima within the hallowed walls—these same huloima you have so assiduously attended in your boat!”

A roar erupted in the crowds behind Alan. One of the Olhyiu broke through the guards and Alan felt a burly arm grab him around his neck. Kemtuk, with a look of fury, dashed forward to free him, before bringing them back to order. “Are we so broken on the yoke of the Storm Wolves that we cannot see the truth? All this time our people have been hungry and humiliated in this desert of snow and ice. Have we not prayed for redemption?”

“Redemption!” roared Kawkaw. “These are no redeemers. Did not the prophecy give us the name of this so-called redeemer? That name was Mira, the one of the light. None among these strangers bears that name.”

The shaman spoke quietly, but firmly. “Does this boy, Alan Duval, not bear the soul eye of the Trídédana upon his brow? Have you not all felt a force of change during his stay among us? Are you so consumed with fear you do not recognize the time of your deliverance?”

But Kemtuk’s wisdom was no defense against the anger and terror that was growing in the people now milling around Alan.

With a clatter, the great harpoon fell from the wall. The multitude was stunned into silence. Siam sprang to his feet, his head and shoulders bowed to stand under the low ceiling. With sweeps of his brawny arms,
he compelled his advisers on his left and right to sit down. Then, in the palpitating silence that followed he addressed himself to Alan alone.

“You come out of the wilderness, cowled in spiderwebs. Your speech is strange to our ears. Your skin is for the most part hairless, like the flesh-spoilers of Isscan and Carfon, people who are no friends of the Olhyiu. Your bearing is humble but your words belie it. Snakoil Kawkaw is right, for the name of the redeemer is foretold to be Mira, the one from whose countenance the sun will shine. So, at pain of your lives, I demand of you for the last time—where have you come from? Why are you among us? Do you not realize the dangers that oppress the Olhyiu from all sides? Yet if only the words of the shaman be true! Prove it, then! Prove that what you say is true or we will be obliged to kill you before the accursed Storm Wolves descend upon us.”

Alan’s heart quailed. “I know nothing about anyone called Mira, any more than I know of these Storm Wolves, or the suffering they have caused your people. But using this triangle—what Kemtuk calls the soul eye—I can sense the thoughts hidden in the minds of others. While you have been debating what to do with me, I have been sensing the mind of this man, Snakoil Kawkaw. What I have observed there is selfishness and greed, and a willingness to betray his people for profit.”

“Serpent-tongued hogsturd!” Kawkaw broke free of the grasp of the chief and hurled himself toward Alan.

But he never reached him. A sudden flare of anger from Alan’s own mind flashed from his brow, a flare of light, like a bolt of lightning that lit up the entire room. Kawkaw was arrested in shock, his claws no more than inches from Alan’s eyes.

There was a new pandemonium of voices, not least among Alan’s friends, as the doors to the chamber burst open and Turkeya entered, carrying a wooden container in his arms, and nodding in the direction of Kemtuk Lapeep. Turkeya hurried to his father’s side and he emptied the container over the table top in front of Siam. “Father, while you have been debating here, I have been searching the boat of Snakoil Kawkaw. I did so at the insistence of the shaman, who has long had his suspicions of Kawkaw. The hunter’s treachery was well hidden, but I discovered this under the floor of his sleeping quarters. You’ll find all the evidence you need here. Here are the folded notes he has been exchanging with our enemies, the Storm Wolves. He sends them messages by night attached to crow’s feet. But his treachery runs deeper than that. There is a price he intends to demand for his cooperation with our enemies. Something he covets even more than gold and silver. That price is your wife, and my mother, Kehloke.”

“Hold him!” Siam growled, his voice little above a whisper. Meanwhile his eyes narrowed to glittering slits as he pored over the evidence. “If this is true, I will deal with Kawkaw myself.”

Kemtuk whispered into Siam’s ear, “Is it not true that Kawkaw wanted Kehloke for his own? Was he not jealous that she chose you?”

With a sudden roar, Siam leaped to his feet, his eyes ablaze with rage. “Lay him in the circle so all can see.” Several burly men tore away Kawkaw’s clothes and splayed the man’s limbs while the chief hefted the Spear of Lug.

“No!” Kawkaw snarled.

“You would have had us murdered and taken Kehloke as your slave. Now I shall cut your heart out.”

Kemtuk spoke to the traitor as the wild-eyed chief stripped to the waist. “At least confess your crimes and give us the information that might yet save some lives.”

“Fools!” shrieked Kawkaw. “How I relished making plans for you!”

“We shall see how pain cleanses such filth from your mind!”

Kawkaw laughed through contorted lips. “It may be my turn to be tormented today—but it will be your turn tomorrow. And the Storm Wolves are your masters in that art.”

Siam struck the man in the mouth with the haft of the spear, silencing his mocking tongue. Then, in fury, he lifted the Ogham-warded blade to shoulder high, as if to plunge it into Kawkaw’s heart.

“Wait!” Alan raised his hand to restrain the chief, and then squatted by the trembling Kawkaw. “How much time do we have?” he pressed him.

Kawkaw bared his bloody teeth, his eyes glaring a hateful defiance. “I cannot be certain,” he said, spitting blood through gritted teeth. “I only sent a message before this council meeting. I saw no reason to press for urgency. You have days, perhaps a week.”

“He’s lying.” Alan gazed away from Kawkaw, towards the chief. “We have no more than a day.”

The shaman put a comforting hand on the chief’s shoulder. “It was not for wisdom but for your courage that Kehloke chose you. Now your people have need of that strength. Heed my counsel. Keep the traitor alive while he is useful to us. He might still prove a source of further information in the difficult hours to come. In the meantime, lead us away from this place of hunger. Make haste, proud Siam. Though our path may be one of danger, it is not our lives that matter. There are those among us whose safety overrides our own. We will assist their escape to Carfon, these chosen ones from another world.”

A Sense of Grief

Mo woke from sleep, listening to the noises all around her. The river nearby never stopped crackling and sighing. Yesterday, she, Mark and Kate had stood on its snow-covered bank and marvelled at the central melt, where the water was too fast and too deep to freeze even this close to the huge glacier-wrapped mountains. But there were other noises too, the sounds of objects being hauled and dragged over the ice-bound lake, the whispers of voices, the cries and whimpers of children that told her that the whole village was in a fever of movement. And now, with daybreak, she saw that all the other bunks were empty. She guessed that Alan was out there, helping the shaman with getting ready to flee. But where were Kate and Mark?

Mo dressed hurriedly, using the last change of underwear from her backpack, and covering her normal clothes with the coat and boots provided by Turkeya. When she emerged onto the deck, Kate was standing at the highest point of the prow, looking up into the sky with an expression of amazement.

“Huh-huh-hi, Kuh-Kate!” she murmured, padding forward to stand beside her. Kate smiled, still staring up into the sky.

“Will you take a good look around you. Can’t you just feel it, Mo? There’s magic in the air!”

Mo wasn’t sure she felt anything other than the freezing cold.

“We’re all changing, aren’t we?”

Mo stared up at Kate’s face into her green eyes.
Changing?
Yes—she believed that the others were changing. They were all changing and she wasn’t. But Kate just laughed, spinning her body around, her auburn hair blowing in the wind. “You can almost taste it.” She put her arm around Mo’s shoulders and threw the other hand into the air. “Will you look up there—can you credit that sky?”

Mo threw her head right back to gaze up with Kate at the thunderheads that were invading from the north, squeezing the air like gigantic pincers. The air whistled and tossed, making her eyes hurt. It was as if the elements were one with the hustle and bustle of the fishing village. She sniffed: she could smell burning. Suddenly she heard Alan call out hoarsely:

“Kemtuk!”

A prickle of gooseflesh crept over Mo’s skin as she realized that she must have heard Alan call the shaman through the triangle. Leaving the boat, Mo ran in the direction of the call until she came across Alan standing out on the ice. He was looking up at the shaman, who was standing high on the middle deck of the Temple Ship. A low morning light bathed the tall figure in a silvery glow. His blind eye glittered like a pearl in a face that was a mask of concentration. Mo desperately wanted to talk to Alan but he looked as preoccupied as ever. Just now, watching that strange communication between him and the old man, Mo felt a new flicker of worry clutch at her stomach.

Mo’s hand moved to the talisman hanging on the lace around her throat. Was Alan changing so much they could lose him entirely?

Instinctively she squeezed the bog-oak figurine.

She wandered away from Alan to watch the bands of men hurrying back from the pinewoods, dragging piles of brushwood on makeshift sleds fashioned out of sail leather. Others were heaping the brushwood along the ice around the Temple Ship. She watched them drenching the piles with lamp oil. Suddenly she flinched, her feelings flooded by a sense of longing. It was so overwhelming she reeled in confusion for several moments before she could lift her head again and focus on what the Olhyiu were doing. The oil-soaked brushwood was being laid out in a broad path linking the boats to the
river and beyond its banks out along the frozen stream as far as the central melt. It looked desperate—the attempts of frightened people trying to soften the ice enough to create a passage.

Picking out the lonely figure of Mark, Mo contemplated her brother, who was standing in silence in front of the Temple Ship gazing up at it with that same look of amazement Kate had bestowed on the gathering storm clouds. Hurrying toward him, she put her hand on his arm.

He blinked with her sudden arrival, as if she had startled him out of a daydream. “Hi, tiddler!” He ruffled her hair. He hadn’t called her that for years. “Did you just feel something really weird?”

Mo gazed up at him, nodding.

How deep in thought he appeared to be! He shook his head, as if struggling to put his feelings into words. “Something like . . . I don’t really know how to describe it.”

“Like a guh-guh-great suh-suh-sadness?”

Mark frowned at her. “Yes, Mo, you’re right. It does feel sort of like sadness. But what does it mean? Where can it be coming from?”

Mo shook her head.

“Weird things are happening, Mo. Don’t you feel like you’re changing?”

It was exactly what Kate had said to her just minutes earlier. Mo blinked rapidly, not knowing what to answer.

Mark laughed, but it was a laugh of bewilderment. “What on earth is really going on? What’s happening to us?”

Mo shook her head. “I duh-duh-don’t know.”

“Let me show you something!” He dropped down onto his haunches and held out his left fist. “Look at that!” He threw his fist wide open.

Mo stared at Mark’s egg-shaped crystal, the light-devouring black in which tiny petals of silver flickered and metamorphosed. With a start, she realized that the flickering patterns inside the crystal were pulsating.

“It’s buh-buh-beating!”

“Yes it is, Mo. Beating in time with my heartbeat. But let me show you something even stranger.” He slipped the crystal egg into his pocket and opened his hand for her to inspect it.

Mo saw the dark color and movement in the skin of Mark’s palm. It just wasn’t possible, but the longer she looked, the more certain she was that she saw the same pulsating matrix in his palm, as if the crystal had transferred something of itself into Mark’s flesh.

“Whuh-whuh-what does it muh-mean?”

“All I know is I slept with the crystal in my fist. So did Kate. When I woke up, I could feel it happening. Bloody hell, Mo! I could actually feel it—as if it was somehow melting into me. Insane, or what?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Then, a few minutes ago, I felt that . . .”

“Suh-suh-sadness!”

“Sadness—yes! I felt it and at the same time my mind was filled with the image of the ship.” Mark stretched his back to stand erect again and both their eyes swiveled up to stare at the ship. “God, I can’t help thinking
about it, Mo. I know it sounds insane, but I’d say the feeling was coming from up there, from the ship itself.”

“Buh-buh-buh-but how?”

“They’re planning on leaving her behind, Mo. The poor old thing, she’s too damaged to sail. There’s no time to repair her. I’m not sure they even know
how
to repair her. That’s why they’re putting the brushwood around her. They’re going to burn her timbers to melt the ice.”

Mo felt it again—that overwhelming clutch of anxiety.

Mark ran a hand, red with cold, through his fair hair. “I only wish there was something we could do to stop it happening. But the superstructure is damaged. The timbers are completely rotted away in places. I had a good look over her at first light. There are these huge rolled up sails made out of sealskin leather, but they’re in tatters, like centuries of mice have been nibbling away at them. Half the lines and the rigging are gone. There just isn’t a hope in hell of making her sail-worthy.”

Mo tugged at Mark’s arm. “Lets go tuh-tuh-talk to thuh-the others.”

“If it’ll make you happy. But I doubt it’ll do any good.”

Half running to keep up with Mark’s hurried strides, Mo had to dodge around the scurrying men with the brushwood. They found Alan still gazing up at the shaman on the quarterdeck, the old man’s face pallid with concentration as he held himself erect before the rail. He was dressed in formal shaman regalia. On his brow he wore the skull of an eagle and over his shoulders a heavy necklace of whale’s teeth. In his right hand he
held the pointed horn of a narwhal and in his left he was cradling a bear’s skull. His eyes were glazed, his attention focused inward, oblivious of worldly attentions. He intoned a prayer, deep and resonant.

As she heard a sudden loud crackling of burning brush and oil, Mo stood between Mark and Alan, and linked her arms through theirs. All three of them lifted their eyes above the shaman into the gathering thunderheads. Suddenly the longing returned, such a sense of despair it struck Mo like a physical blow.

Mark shouted above the growing wind, “It’s definitely coming from the ship.”

Alan shook his head, unable to explain it. He shouted to gain the shaman’s attention again, “Kemtuk!”

But the shaman didn’t respond.

Mo had to raise her voice to be heard above the human commotion and the rising wind. “Shuh-shuh-shuh-show him!” She touched Mark’s hand.

Mark held open his left hand so Alan could see for himself.

Alan’s eyes widened. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do we,” Mark retorted. “Maybe the crystal egg is doing something to me in the same way the ruby’s changing you, only more slowly. It’s interacting with me in some way.”

“Wow!”

“I wuh-wuh-wuh-woke up with an idea.” Mo concentrated as hard as she could to try to control her stammer. “Luh-luh-like . . .” She gave up and held her hand against her ear.

“What—something to do with a cell phone?”

She nodded.

Mark shook his head. “I think Mo is wondering if the crystals have taken on some kind of property from the phones.”

“Maybe you’re right, Mo. I guess it would make some loopy kind of sense.”

Mark shrugged. “But how do we check it?”

“What do you mean? Like some way of testing mind-to-mind?”

“Shouldn’t be that difficult.”

Alan gestured so the three friends gathered together in a close huddle. “Okay, let’s see if we can call Kate. Just think it while you’re clenching your fist around your egg. I’ll do something similar through the crystal in my head. On my count to three. One, two, three!”

They stood together and waited. Within seconds they heard Kate’s shriek and she came careering through the Olhyiu, with an excited look on her face.

“You got the message?”

“I heard you calling me.”

Alan, Mo and Mark laughed as one. Mark unclasped his fist to show Kate the flickering matrix in his palm. “Open your hand and show us yours.”

Kate seemed unaware that her right hand was tightly clenched around her crystal. Now, exposing her palm, they all saw the same soft green matrix embedded in her flesh, speckled with motes of yellow and gold.

Mo gasped.

Alan explained, “Mo’s excited because we didn’t actually call out your name. We called you through Mark’s crystal and my ruby triangle.”

“Ah, go on!” She shook her head and laughed. “For goodness’ sake—you people must think I’m an idiot!”

Alan hugged her. “It’s true, Kate.”

Kate looked at him questioningly, then stepped back, her hands clapped to her mouth and her eyes wide.

“Makes you wonder what else we can do.” Alan looked thoughtfully around at the milling people. “I have an idea.” He picked one of the women who appeared to be scolding her children. She was shouting, distractedly, in Olhyiu. “Mark, Kate—get a grip of your crystals. I want us to form a circle. You too, Mo—I want you to be our neutral observer here. Now, guys, let’s all focus on that woman over there, listen to what she is shouting, and try to project ourselves through the crystals.”

The woman was married. They could tell this now because they knew married women among the Olhyiu displayed jewels on a chain around their necks, rather than rings on their fingers, and she was shouting from the deck of her boat to some children frolicking on the ice.

“Monkeys!” Mark and Kate exclaimed it together. The woman was calling her children monkeys.

“Yee-hah!” They all roared with triumph, clapping arms around each other’s shoulders and jumping with glee on the trampled ice.

“Mo?” Alan was gazing down at her, a question in his eyes.

“I—I . . . I thuh-thuh-thuh-thought . . .” Mo stared from one to another of her friends, her lips trembling.

“You thought the experiment was a scam?”

Mo shook her head, far too excited to even try to explain through her stupid stammering lips what she wanted to tell them. She too had heard the word “monkeys.” How was that possible when she had no crystal? Even as she turned her head away from Alan, startled by the idea, a thunderclap erupted directly over their heads, causing all four friends to stare up into the sky.

Alan waited for the thunder to stop booming, so he could think more clearly. Something very strange, something as frightening as it was wonderful, was happening to him and his friends, and he couldn’t even begin to understand it. Ordinarily he’d have asked the shaman for an explanation. But the shaman was preoccupied with spiritual forces, so that when Alan opened his mind to the shaman’s words, he in his turn became the receptor for communications of meaning and vision somehow deeper than words. He knew that Kemtuk, in asking for his people to be freed from tyranny, was extolling the sacred visions that had been forbidden to him for all the long years his people had been held in captivity. Suddenly the hairs on Alan’s neck stood up in awe.

He was gazing out on a vision of creation, at a time when there was but one existence, and his name was Akoli, the Creator.

“In that time,” the shaman spoke, “he was in the form of the Great Spirit. In one day he created the world, lifting up the lofty peaks of the mountains and cloaking their shoulders with snow. Then he forced apart the mountains and into the deeps between he blew the moisture of his breath and created the oceans. Henceforth, these would become his spirit home.”

Alan saw the cataclysms as the mountains reared up out of the land. His body shook with the earthquake as their vastness was cleaved apart and, through the turbulent upheaval, a titanic gust of wind and rain surged and swelled through the birth of continents to become the storm-tossed oceans. Through the shaman’s vision he tasted the bitter-damp mulch of the newborn world upon his tongue, he breathed the sulphurous first atmosphere, he stood on the brink of spuming calderas of gigantic volcanoes, and he watched the eruptions of boiling lava that would fashion and refashion the primal landscape in the dawn of time.