Authors: David Farland
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Genetic Engineering
Yet something about the shape of the town bothered him. All across town, where ignorant spirits built as mindlessly as ants, piling one block against another, Tull saw that it had all been brought into harmony, the sweeping fields, the hovels.
It reminded him of the endless stair above sanctum where an ancient mathematician had placed stones and bits of twisted metal on the ground so that the rising sun cast ever-changing shadow pictures on the land. Only on this cracked plain, these piles of stone were not meant to cast shadows. Each structure, each pile of stones was part of a mosaic, a single shape in a grand portrait that covered the countryside.
Tull let himself rise higher and higher, above the top of the minaret, until the pattern came into focus: Chaa, the great magic crow, was flying across the face of the land. Tull’s house had been the eye of the bird, and the exotic castle of Phylomon was the ruffled feathers at its neck.
On the high winds Tull let himself sink as he pondered what he saw. Tull had imagined that he was seeing shelters, perhaps the houses people someday dreamed to live in, or perhaps the shelter people thought they lived in.
Yet over it all, binding the construction together in ways that were invisible to others was Chaa.
Tull sat, perplexed. He went back to his own little hovel, crawled back into his own hole, and floated down into the tunnel beneath. He observed the skeleton lying there still, and recognized that its skull was human, the shoulders broad, about the same size as his father’s, Jenks.
Though Jenks is still alive
, Tull realized,
my spirit eyes see him as dead, because I have rejected him and he is dead to me.
In an antechamber that Tull had not noticed before, he found a Pwi skeleton, the skeleton of his mother.
Yet still nothing made sense. Tull could see things missing from his hovel. Where were Fava and Wayan? Why could he not envision them in his crater? Why were the walls of his hovel so broken and haphazard?
Tull rose to his wall, saw where it had crumbled.
Somewhere there must be a stone to fill this gap,
he considered, and suddenly he was shooting forward, blurring over the landscape faster than a ruby-throated hummingbird, faster than a falling star, until he came at last to an open field.
He stood in town, behind the spice shop. There before him was a stone to fit the breach. He manipulated the clot of his soul, so that the ghostly appendages hefted the stone. It looked right, felt the right size. He brushed off the red dust.
The stone glowed in his hand, came to life like a hot coal. He looked into it and saw another world, a world of darkness with a tiny man in it—not a painting, not even figures drawn by the most expert hand, for the place had breadth and depth.
He bent forward, looking closer and closer. Garamon was there, in a dark place, shivering and hungry. Garamon fumbled for a latch, opened a door—and looked out to the back of the cloth shop. The scene faded.
Tull shook the stone. It seemed solid, rough with splotches of lichens. Only a broken stone of an odd size that would fit the wall of his shelter.
Chaa had warned him that as his spirit eyes opened, things would change with each progressive vision, but Tull was not prepared for so many changes.
Before I sought this vision,
Tull thought,
I had hoped to see the world more clearly, and this is how my spirit eyes perceive the world: people in hovels, recklessly stacking stones, some creating shelters, some … people in hovels, building on the bones of the past, the sagging ruin of previous generations.
And then he understood. The stones on the plain were incidents, possibilities ripening in time, waiting to happen, waiting to be organized. And the shelter, the hovels that others sought to build were the futures that they constructed for themselves.
Some of the townspeople were witless, people without vision, taking no thought for the future, and those sat openly on barren mounds; others, like Phylomon, built exotic castles, stretching for miles across the countryside, large enough to fill the whole earth, but often habitable only by eccentrics like themselves.
There was no ultimate shaper of things.
If left to themselves, the stones would have continued to propagate, the future would continue, disorganized. A flat barren plain with stones being made and destroyed.
But Tull could make something of it, build any type of shelter he wanted. His vision of the World Tree only days before had dimmed, to be replaced by this.
Suddenly shamed by his own little hovel. Tull decided to take the stone back, mend the wall, and begin considering what type of future he would build.
The copper sky above suddenly darkened, blotted out, and a whining hum rose all around. Tull nearly dropped the stone.
Above him hovered an immense black orb that blocked out the sky for miles. It was dark, like the hollow of a sinister soul, and Tull imagined that it was as large as a moon.
It hovered in place, and Tull realized that it observed him dispassionately, just watching. Balls of light floated up into it and were consumed, hapless souls that seemed unable to resist.
The orb pulled at Tull, inviting him upward, inviting him to ascend like the other, to be absorbed.
“What are you?” Tull shouted.
The great ball of darkness closed half the distance, stopped again and waited.
“Who are you?” Tull asked.
The earth filled with the sound of thunder. The answer struck him with horrible force, like a great fist, the words compressed into a single thought: “I am the Beast, your god, Adjonai.”
A river of darkness burst from the sky, stretching out like a finger to touch him.
Clutching the stone, Tull pulled it close. The lightning of his soul flashed out to do battle, and Tull fluttered and fled.
***
Chapter 15: The Beast Rises
Shortly after dark, Fava took Wayan down the trail to town, to search for Tull. Where the trail met the road, she heard Tull screaming, the cry of a victim being hacked to death, a scream that shook her very soul.
She followed the sound to Chaa’s house, passed Zhopila and her little sisters huddling just inside the front door, and ran to the Spirit Room. An icy cold wind seemed to be blowing, spinning lazily through the house. She stopped. The air was oddly clouded and felt as thick as milk.
Chaa already stood in the doorway to the room, his eyes wide his face pale. He backed away slowly, saying “Fool! What have you done?”
Fava tried to push past Chaa, but as she touched him, she ran into a wall of ice, a rush of air so cold that it threatened to snap her fingers. Something else was in the room with them.
She put her hand forward gingerly, felt the cushion of cold, as if she had stuck her hand into a river of freezing ice water, and her fingers disappeared.
She could see the walls, the room, she could see Tull lying on a woven reed mat within the fog, his eyes open and fixed in terror.
Chaa grabbed her, pulled her back to the doorway, and she realized the air was thickening.
“You can’t go in there!” Chaa shouted. “It will eat you!”
The spirit room began to tremble, and its walls shook. The dagger made from a carnosaur’s tooth tattled from its peg on the wall, dropped to the floor, and lay there spinning.
The shelves with Chaa’s medicines rumbled, and suddenly the wood ruptured, exploding into a thousand shards. Splinters flew against the wall and embedded themselves like a forest of toothpicks into the shape of a crow, then as quickly pulled out and blew around the room in a maelstrom, as if caught in the center of a whirlwind.
“What is it?” Fava shouted, recognizing that something invisible had entered the room.
“The Beast!” Chaa croaked in horror.
Fava heard water dribbling, saw that a pitcher was hovering in front of them, pouring water onto the ground.
“You can’t save him!” Chaa staggered backward, pulled Wayan from Fava’s arms and yelled for Zhopila to take the children out of the house.
“Tull?” Fava called, looking into the darkening room. She pushed against the wall of cold, tried to step into it.
Tull’s head twisted, and he peered at her, his face stricken in horror. “Stay back, Fava!” he cried and the splinters of wood whirled past her face.
The bearskin suddenly pulled from the wall and dropped onto all fours, the bear’s claws scratching on the floor like a puppet’s as the rug scrabbled forward.
Pots of herbs splattered against the ceiling, and suddenly the bearskin reared up, filling out as if it were a living creature, and the hide wandered around the Spirit Room, huge and brown, sniffing at the walls.
From the front of the house, Chaa shouted for Fava to run, and Fava heard Zhopila crying, the children running from the house.
The bearskin ambled to Fava, sniffed her crotch, watched her from empty eye sockets. It reared on its hind legs and pawed the air, then dropped to the floor like a discarded rag.
Tull floated up into the air at waist height, rotated so that he faced the floor and screamed.
Chaa came back into the hallway. He grabbed Fava’s arm, began pulling at her. She pushed him away and Chaa slugged her, hard, knocking her against the wall.
“Please! Please. He’s dead! You can’t save him,” Chaa shouted, and he began pulling Fava from the house.
As Fava backed away, Tull’s arms spread wide, and he floated up until he lay splayed against the ceiling.
The Beast toys with us,
Fava realized. Tull began to spin like a pinwheel, arms and legs flailing while his back remained flat against the ceiling, and whatever force held him, whatever kept her from entering the room, was so powerful, Fava could not hope to fight it. She backed off slowly, as she would from a bear—hoping not to attract its attention. She reached the front door.
Outside, Zhopila and Chaa held each other, sobbing, and Wayan and Fava’s little sisters all stood in the dirt street.
Fava felt numb, mindless. “What can we do?” she asked, and Chaa shook his head.
Inside the house Tull screamed one last time, a long plaintive note.
There was a tearing sound, like the shredding of cloth, and then the back part of Chaa’s house caved in.
A huge wind roared across the field behind the house, bowled through the forest, snapping two giant redwoods.
Chaa stood frozen in place, and Fava did not move. From the tearing sounds, she knew that she did not want to go back in there, she didn’t want to see Tull’s mangled corpse shredded on the floor.
She felt weak, and an evil kwea hit her, a feeling of grief so profound, she could not voice it. She fell to the ground and wished only for her own destruction.
“You could not have saved him,” Chaa whispered. “The beast saw him, knew what Tull was, and I was not there to protect him. The beast knows its enemies. None of us could have done anything.”
Fava lay on the ground. The words were no comfort for the empty place in her heart. She shouted, hoping to voice her pain, and Tull opened the front door, stepped out, his face a pale mask.
“It let you live?” Chaa hissed, and Tull nodded. He staggered to Fava, knelt, and put his arms around her. Chaa asked in wonder, “The beast tasted your soul, and it let you live?”
Tull nodded dumbly. “I—I don’t know what happened. I walked the Land of Shapes, found the mayor, and then it came. The beast swallowed me. But then it spit me out.”
Chaa reached for Tull’s hand, but then would not touch it. He looked deep into Tull’s eyes, as if viewing a stranger, and Chaa seemed more grieved to see Tull alive than dead.
He stood for a long moment, just holding Tull’s shoulders. “The Beast knows its enemies—as well as its allies,” Chaa said at last, turning away, his voice husky with revulsion. “I do not think that I should train you anymore.”
***
Chapter 16: Rejection
A crowd grew outside the house, and Tull turned away from Chaa, as if so shocked by Chaa’s rejection that Tull didn’t know what else to do.
Fava held Tull, worried for him, her hands brushing against him, as if to reassure herself that Tull was alive. Yet no one else would come near them.
Little Wayan huddled against Zhopila’s legs, and the street began to fill with Pwi who had heard the screaming. Some people went to the back of the house, stood staring at the massive redwoods that lay snapped, sprawling across the barren field where old Vi kept her cows and pigs.
Others looked with dismay at the back of Chaa’s house, where the wattle roof to the Spirit Room hung close to the ground like the mouth of a cave, yet they would not approach the opening, as if they feared that something else still inhabited the room.
Tull stood, panting, and when the crowd grew thick, he told some younger Pwi, “I know where Garamon is hiding. Who will come with me?”
Fava’s mouth fell open in wonder.
My husband took a Spirit Walk?
No one tried to do that alone. She felt surprised that he had survived.
Several boys shifted nervously then stepped forward. Tull took six Pwi boys into town, and Fava followed at a safe distance. They went behind the mayor’s old cloth shop, and Tull knelt beside a stump on the ground.
He pulled up on it, swinging it up, to reveal a small room—a cubbyhole.
Mayor Garamon Goodman lay asleep inside, huddling in the cold, a loaded pistol in his hand. His skin looked pale and sickly, his clothing grimy and ragged.
Tull grabbed the pistol before the mayor could awake, ripped it away, and then jerked the major from his sleep, lifting him with both hands and yanking him into the air.
The mayor came awake then and screamed like a girl.
Some boys set to beating the mayor mercilessly, but Tull ordered, “Leave him alone. Let’s take him to Phylomon for questioning. We don’t want just one slaver, he wanted to clean out the whole nest of them!”
Yet Fava worried that it would do no good. If the mayor kept his mouth shut, it would be impossible to find his cohorts.
So she followed the triumphant hunters to the inn. The mayor tried to walk, but every few steps the young men would kick his legs out from behind him, so that he fell to the ground. If he lay there too long, they’d kick him again until he crawled to his feet.
When they reached the end, Fava hung in the doorway outside the Starfarer’s room. He seemed pleased to see Garamon again.
He said quite simply, “So, we are going to talk about your accomplices. When you give me their names, the pain will stop, but not before.”
The Starfarer had learned many tortures in his thousand years, and he asked Tull to go to the blacksmith’s shop and get some tongs, and knives, and pokers and various other tools. Then he had another boy go down to the cooking hearth at the inn and bring up a bucket of hot coals.
When everything was ready, he set to work.
Fava fled the inn, went outside to wait. There are some things that a woman should not see, that no person should ever witness.
She feared that the mayor would remain silent, that he would not be able to root out the slavers. She sat in the sun, and could not ignore the mayor’s screams from the room at the top of the inn.
Within an hour, several young Pwi raced out of the room, gathered Pwi from the crowd that had formed, and said excitedly, “Come with me!”
They raced through town in clubs, a gang of Neanderthals armed with clubs and swords.
Tull came walking down to the front of the inn, his face pale. There was a kwea of sadness about him, a weariness, that she had never seen before.
“He gave us the names?” she asked. “So soon?”
Tull nodded. “He did not want it to last long. I think in the end, he was already exhausted from hiding, from going hungry. He only wanted the pain to come to an end.”
She listened, and realized that the screaming in the inn had stopped. She could not even hear the mayor sobbing.
“Then, he’s dead?” Fava asked.
Tull just nodded.
From the inn here on the hill, she could see nearly every house in town. She watched the Pwi march through town, stop at certain houses, and break through the doors.
Within moments they brought the slavers out into the streets, both the men and their families, and then opened the homes for looting.
When the slavers had been rounded up, Phylomon came down from the inn, walking with cool precision, a longsword in hand.
He went to each man, to each little family, spoke a few words. Then he beheaded each man’s wife and children, in front of him, and then executed the slaver and left the bodies lying there to bleed out on the cobblestones along Merchant Street.
It was horrible to see, and yet, Fava realized that it was just. The men had taken children from their families, terrorized the Pwi for years. She suspected that they had been complicit in numerous murders.
Killing just the slavers was not enough. Phylomon was sending a message to them: You will lose everything.
Fava found that retribution left a terrible taste in her mouth.
Even Tull stood shaking, and before the executions were completed, Fava helped him home to his bedroom, then set a fire in order to get rid of a chill that had descended over them both.
For a long time Tull lay across the room from the fire, gazing into the flames. Outside, the day seemed quiet. No sparrows peeped among the rhododendrons outside the cabin. No squirrels barked. The only sound seemed to be the sigh of wind in the trees, and the sound of waves against the shore outside.
“I hear a serpent’s voice,” Tull said dreamily after a time. “A big one, he swimming over from Hotland. He’s very sick. And tired.”
That surprised Fava. Tull did not talk of the slavers, of the horror of the day, only of the serpent.
“Are you sure?” Fava asked, realizing that whatever he’d witnessed, Tull did not want to talk about it.
“Yes,” Tull said. “Can you hear him? Listen …”
Fava listened for several moments. A gust of wind buffeted the house, and waves whispered down in the bay. Other than that, nothing. “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “I need to go get Wayan. Will you be all right alone?” She worried that the “Beast” would return, or that Tull would not be able to hold in the horrors of what he’d witnessed with the mayor.
“I’ll be … just let me be alone,” Tull answered.
Fava went out, walked down the darkening trail to her parents’ house. Three dozen Pwi stood outside it. Fava walked back down the long hallway toward her father’s Spirit Room, thinking to speak to her father some more, ask questions.
She heard Phylomon talking loudly, and Fava stopped to listen, peeked around the corner.
Phylomon asked “Where is Tull now?”
Chaa said, “He went home, to rest, and to think. We all must think. I must consider carefully what to do.” He fell silent a moment, and then said softly. “I do not know if I should keep him as a pupil any longer.”
Phylomon grabbed her father’s shoulders, turned the Spirit Walker around, so that he peered into Chaa’s face, and asked, “Tull is more than just a Spirit Walker, isn’t he? He’s a Talent Warrior.”
Chaa nodded. “Yes,” he admitted. “A very powerful one.”
“A warrior like Terrazin?” The Starfarer’s voice betrayed genuine fear, as if it were an accusation. His tone confused Fava. She knew the names of some ancient Talent Warriors—Thunatra Dream Woman, who battled men in their dreams; Kwitcha the healer, who raised men from the dead; Uth, who had called poisonous snakes from their holes to protect him. But Fava had never heard of Terrazin.
“Much like the Dragontamer,” Chaa said. “Perhaps too much. I thought I could control him, bend him to my will. But tonight the Beast beheld Tull, and it approved of him!”
For a moment Phylomon held silent, then ventured, “For these past months, I’ve trusted your judgment. You said that Tull could destroy the Slave Lords, even though it may cost my life. What are you thinking now?”
“Last spring,” Chaa said, “when I took my Spirit Walk, I viewed a possible future. I saw Tull return with the eggs of the sea serpents from Craal, and everything has happened nearly as I foresaw—until today. Tull tried to look into the spirit world contrary to my orders, something I had not foreseen. He did more than he should have. He tried to take a short Spirit Walk. And he attracted the Beast. Until today, Tull was convinced that Adjonai was but an illusion. Now, they have met. I had not foreseen that Adjonai would approve of him. I had hoped that Tull would go to Bashevgo, throw it down, and reign as king. I had seen a future where Craal toppled within a few years. Now, I wonder.…”
Phylomon laughed with a note of worry in his voice. “Sometimes it rains even on Spirit Walkers. You were able to see six months into the future—that is better than many Spirit Walkers could do. If you have misjudged, now we must ask, what harm have you done?” He tried to sound calm, casual, but fear still carried in his voice.
“Who knows?” Chaa said. “Everything has changed. Perhaps nothing will happen as I saw it—your death, Tull’s reign. Now Tull’s spirit eyes are opening. If nothing else, I’ve wakened him. That makes him very dangerous. Terrazin woke to his power when he first stared into the pit of death, as you well know. It may be foolhardy to try to kill Tull now.”
“It could be foolhardy to wait,” Phylomon said. “If Tull wakens to his power, we may not be able to kill him.”
Chaa stood, looking down at the barren ground, where furs had been this morning, as if lost in vision. “Tull is not awake to his power. He is only trying to learn the art of Spirit Walking. He has not even guessed his potential.”
Phylomon shook his head in confusion, crossed his long blue arms and stood, head leaned back, eyes closed in concentration. “You think that Tull may be the Okansharai. Yet have you considered the prophecies of Pwichutwi? He said the Okansharai would be born to the mother of Evil. I would say that if you look for someone to free the Pwi, then look for him in the city of Bashevgo.”
“I know the prophecy,” Chaa sighed, “and I have no faith in it. I can see six months into the future, perhaps a year or two. My great grandfather—one of the best—could look only four years into the future. I do not believe Pwichutwi could have seen five hundred years. He only dreamed. Still, I hope for an Okansharai. The very fact that people dream that one may someday come, only increases the odds that someone will try to step into the role. I’d hoped that Tull would be the one.”
Phylomon still stood with his head leaning back, eyes closed. “What if Tull disobeys you again? What if he tries to continue practicing as a Spirit Walker?”
Chaa took a breath, voice ragged. “If he succeeded in taking a long Spirit Walk, he would see into his own future, discover his own potential. I have not given Tull enough training to do that. He has not made any allies in the Land of Shapes. I think that path would be closed to him.”
“Terrazin trained himself to Spirit Walk,” Phylomon said. “If he could do it, then perhaps Tull can do it. But you have allies in the Land of Shapes,” Phylomon hinted dangerously. “You could warn them, make sure Tull does not learn how to Spirit Walk.”
“You are asking me to murder Tull because you do not want his blood on your own hands,” Chaa said. “But he is still just an innocent. He has not committed any crime yet.”
“Do you have any doubts that he will?” Phylomon asked. “If Tull learns how to kill a man with a thought, how long will the armies of Craal last?”
“For less than the length of a heartbeat,” Chaa answered. “Tull would wipe them out, down to the last man.” He hesitated. “And he would kill you, if he suspected that you would try to stop him. Still, he is not Terrazin. He has not been so corrupted.”
“Are you so sure? Adjonai touched Tull’s mind, and then let him live! The Beast approved of him.…”
Fava shuddered. Even now as Phylomon spoke the name of the dark god, Fava could feel Adjonai’s evil kwea, as if he were listening, drawing close to hear what others said of him.
“Then there is only one thing to do,” Chaa said. “Now I must take another Spirit Walk. My last.”
“Your Last?”
“I must walk the future of the Slave Lords,” Chaa said. “They play too important a part in the affairs of men for me to ignore them in such a matter. And the Creators are making weapons—the gray worms, perhaps others. I have never hinted at this before, but I may be able to connect with them and learn what the Creators plan for us. But this thing is forbidden. If I look into the minds of those evil things, my allies in the Land of Shapes will renounce me. I won’t be able to go back—ever.”
“And if you erred in waking Tull?”
Chaa said bitterly, “Then we must dispose of him in his sleep, before it is too late.”
“I’m going to have to leave for Sanctum in the morning,” Phylomon said. “I have business there that can no longer wait. I won’t be able to return for a few weeks. If you learn that Tull needs to die, I expect you to take care of it.”
“Ayaah,” Chaa said reluctantly. “I’ll take care of it.”
Fava turned and fled blindly down the hall.
***