The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  The shaman, completely pale now from loss of blood, smiled slightly. The white of his teeth was nearly the same color as the rest of his face. “It’s nothing a little fishing line won’t fix.”

  “Who are you?” whispered Aquppak.

  “My name is Kritlaq. We serve the same master now.”

  “I’m master here,” said Aquppak.

  “Is that what you think?”

  CHAPTER 41

  THE UNDERWORLD

  Alaana struggled to tear her foot loose. The crack in the floor widened, pushing upward as four more ebon hands strained for purchase on her leg. Where their hungry black flesh met her own they burned, as if eating away at her spirit-body.

  Alaana slashed down with the crimson gemblade, severing one spindly hand at the wrist. She kicked her booted foot at another.

  But the gap only widened and more hands appeared. Just below the surface she glimpsed a half dozen lumentin, their wickedly twisted features leering up at her. Their caribou faces were stretched into wolf-like snouts, patched with charred fur that crumbled away like charcoal, and crowned by stunted, thorny antlers. But their eyes were distinctly human and full of an unspeakable sadness and hunger.

  “Don’t fight them this way,” advised Nunavik. “Your rage only pulls you deeper!”

  Alaana couldn’t see any alternative. If she didn’t fight, she would soon be shredded by clawed fingers or chopped up between snapping jaws.

  She continued to struggle but it seemed that ten or more of the creatures had latched on, and even with their emaciated forms their combined weight was tremendous. The floor support gave out entirely. They all fell, collapsing down through cavern after cavern, the walls, rotted and pock-marked, crumbling on impact. Strange fleshy matter sucked at Alaana as she passed, its foul kiss an attempt to draw her in. As she crashed from ledge to ledge, most of the lumentin fell away, broken-backed and shrieking. She slashed with the gemblade wherever she found persistent claws still digging in.

  Alaana could think of nothing except the fact that she had missed her chance at Vithrok.

  Her fall ended abruptly on a floor of black, pitted stone. This cavern was different from those of the Lowerworld which had an earthy smell and a natural feel to them. This place was filled with a bitter acrid smoke, which was itself a distinct entity that drifted in a confused way around the room, worrying Alaana’s hair and ruffling her parka. But it did no harm. Although many of the spirits in the Underworld were malevolent, some were simply lost and confused. All were in torment.

  Three of the lumentin had made the fall with Alaana. They leapt for her immediately. The cut of her blade didn’t deter their advance as she slashed and stabbed. Even after two had fallen, the third came for her without hesitation. Crazed with starvation, it saw only a rare chance at food.

  So strong was its desire, the lumentin managed to knock Alaana over. In a flash it was on top of her, snapping and biting. Alaana could sense the twisted soul of the man it had once been, a hunter among the Chukchee, a husband, a father. In order to feed his family, he had taken a caribou without permission of the spirits and suffered the wrath of Tekkeitsertok. The lumentin took a bite out of Alaana’s arm before she drove the crimson gemblade through the point of its jaw. Alaana felt badly about stabbing him, especially since the taboo the poor man had broken no longer existed now that Tekkeitsertok was gone. But death for the lumentin was a mercy forever denied them. As they were already dead souls, the gemblade brought only temporary dissolution, sending the tortured soul onward to some other torment.

  Alaana fell gasping to her knees, burned by the lumentin’s hungry touch and bleeding from a dozen bite wounds. Back in the karigi, her body suffered the same physical damage but it existed for the present as nothing more than an empty shell. Should she die in this realm of spirit, as now seemed likely, her inua would remain trapped forever down in the Underworld to suffer alongside all these others. She wondered who would find her corpse sitting dead in the karigi?

  “Nunavik?” she asked. “You still with me?”

  “Always,” replied the walrus as it materialized beside her.

  In the Underworld Nunavik manifested as the corpse of a walrus, his golden skin burned black and peeling, his eyes rotten in their sockets.

  Alaana cried out in alarm.

  “Indeed,” said Nunavik.

  Alaana didn’t like to look upon the walrus this way. What strange companions she had, so many of them already dead and still playing at life.

  “Don’t just stand there gaping!” said Nunavik self-consciously. He swatted at his corrupted chest as if to knock a few specks of dust away but the motion only sent strands of peeling skin unfurling from the black, sagging folds.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alaana. “It’s just that you look sort of like a bigger, fatter version of Tikiqaq.”

  “You forget that my physical body is long dead. Maybe this is what I really am. Maybe my soul belongs here. They’ve been trying to lure me down to the Underworld for a long, long time. To this point, I’ve resisted through strength of will. But now that I’m here they seek to corrupt me. I hear them, whispering their little lies and accusations; I feel them trying to worm their way inside my mind through guilt and regret. Luckily I’ve already made my peace with Sedna. I’ve nothing to worry about. But, I can not remain here for very long…”

  “Then we shall have to get you out.”

  “And you as well. Call for help and be quick about it. The five drumbeats will deliver us back to Nunatsiaq.”

  Alaana felt a shiver of panic but suppressed it quickly. Such negative feelings were never allowed here, lest they manifest in some deadly form or other.

  “There is no one in the karigi to call us back,” she said. “We had intended only a short visit to the sea, remember? We left no one in the karigi with the drum.”

  An eerie squealing noise distracted her, a strange, gauzy sound like nothing Alaana had ever heard before. It came from some distance down the length of the tunnel and was moving closer.

  “Tiki!” Alaana reached out to the spiritual world of Nunatsiaq. It was such a long, long way away. Her spirit-woman could not leave the Underworld, but instead she sent out a tendril, like a plant shoot, up through the mesh of caverns and tunnels above, winding its way up and around, retracing the steps of her fall. She forgot her surroundings, forgot the pressing danger and everything else except that questing tendril, that shoot searching upward toward the light. Eventually it broke through to the cavern of the Lowerworld, but Alaana felt she could go no farther, her spirit stretched to the limit. And the world of Nunatsiaq was still very far above. Unreachable. “Tiki,” she cried out. “I need your help. Tiki! Answer me!”

  It was no use. Exhausted, she pulled back.

  “What was that?” asked Nunavik. “Did you try to stretch yourself all the way up? That never works! Wouldn’t it be a little bit easier just to send out a message through the empty spaces?” The walrus cocked his head in concentration and then boomed, “Tikiqaq, you useless rag doll of a seal carcass! Beat the drum! Get us out of here!”

  He paused for a moment and then added, “Idiot!”

  “No answer,” Alaana said. “Where has it gone?”

  “There are so many possibilities, it strains the mind,” said Nunavik. “Perhaps it is playing blanket toss with the children, or having a deep, philosophical discussion with an eider duck. That wretched little thing is completely undependable.”

  “My father could do it. He knows how to call me back, if I could only get word to him.”

  Alaana strained to picture her father, who had served as her assistant in the karigi in the early years before Tiki had come along. She imagined Kigiuna sitting by the river, cross-legged as he watched the men tighten the hides on their kayaks. Her father would have a short knife in his hand and a piece of ivory. He would be carving some small thing, perhaps a toy for one of his grandchildren. His eyes might be drifting closed; he might be dozing off.

  “F
ather!” cried Alaana. “Father. Hear me!”

  But this also was no use. Her father was no shaman. He couldn’t receive messages on the wind.

  The ominous shrieking noises intensified, like the sound of water rushing through a tunnel, and coming closer, bringing with it now the smell of rotting meat and offal.

  “We’re not safe here,” said Alaana.

  “Really?” said Nunavik sharply. “What about the drum? There is a remnant of caribou spirit still within the stretched drumhead of the big round drum. I’ve done this trick before. If you can get through to that tiny soul, convince the drumhead to beat itself, or make itself to vibrate, or whatever…”

  Not rushing water, but a tide of horrific creatures now appeared at the entrance tunnel. It looked as if they might have once been lemmings, though bloated now to the size of sled dogs, their claws exaggerated, their teeth horrific. They had difficulty squeezing past each other to gain entrance, their heads had grown so monstrously huge.

  “Accccckkk!” said Nunavik. He shoved Alaana behind him. The walrus took a deep breath, puffing out his chest as he rose to the occasion.

  “Who dares?” he roared. “Who dares attack the Black Tusk?” The walrus seemed to swell to twice his normal size, his round cheeks bloated and purple, the dead skin straining and ready to burst, his tusks twisting wickedly.

  Nothing but malevolence flashed in the monsters’ eyes as they continued rushing onward, bursting into the cavern, running one atop the other.

  Nunavik pressed forward. “Get back or die! Nunavik, the Black Tusk, son of Big Bellow will not warn you again!”

  Hesitation shook the tide of monstrous lemmings.

  “Come on then! I am thirsty for blood. Come, and I will feast on the jelly of your eyes!”

  The giant lemmings, as one, turned and ran. They piled over one another to force a way back out through the narrow chamber entrance.

  “That was impressive,” said Alaana.

  Nunavik shrugged. “Bah. They are only lemmings after all, afraid of their own shadows. But still, I suggest we go the other way.”

  Alaana and Nunavik passed through a low, shadowed tunnel. They avoided its surface of glistening, wet hair which could be heard breathing huskily.

  “Do you know any way out?” asked Alaana.

  “As I said, ungarpaluk, I don’t come down here very often.”

  The next cavern was a sticky-webbed chamber whose walls appeared to be made of blood. Several lost souls were caught in the silken mesh, among them a whimpering lumentin, another which resembled a brown bear with the head of a dog, and several trembling gull chicks.

  “Caught up in their own fears,” said Nunavik.

  “Can’t we release them?” asked Alaana. “Save them?”

  She slashed at the restraining webwork with the ruby gemblade, but it was no use.

  “You can’t help them,” snapped Nunavik, “And I have to say, shaking the web was not a particularly good idea either.”

  Two gigantic spiders came scurrying out from recesses in the gooey cavern wall. These were not ordinary spiders, though they did come complete with the bloated abdomens and eight hairy legs of such creatures. Their heads were made of stone, carved into mask-like faces of human beings. The features in the gray stone were frozen in malevolent snarls. The jaws clacked open and shut.

  “Are you afraid?” asked Nunavik.

  Weapon in hand, Alaana stood her ground. “No.”

  The spiders juttered toward them, spraying silken muck. Alaana ducked down in a common tactic of the Anatatook hunters that forced the creature to come at her from above, buoyed by its long hairy legs. She knocked aside the stone head with its snapping pincer jaws and drove her dagger into the bloated abdomen. Black ichor ran out, covering her hand as she twisted the blade, slicing a long gash in the underbelly. The black blood stung her hand like a thousand needles and ate away at the surface of the gemstone blade. Where the creature’s belly had been ripped, an army of small spiders spilled from the muck. They swarmed over Alaana without much fuss, taking only a nibble or two, and then ran for their bolt holes in a frenzy.

  Nunavik grappled with the other gigantic spider, keeping the snapping jaws at bay with his curved tusks, but with only short flippers and tail with which to strike back, he would soon be overcome. Alaana leapt to his aid, again putting the gemblade to good use by stabbing the spider-thing just below the back of the head, where the stone met soft gooey flesh. As she had assumed, this proved to be a kill spot. She pried the stiffening carcass off the walrus.

  “Are you all right, great Black Tusk?” asked Alaana coyly.

  Nunavik shook his flat head dazedly for a moment. “We’ve little time for unfunny jokes, Alaana. This place is too dangerous. There are too many malevolent spirits lying in wait for unsuspecting shamans.”

  When she withdrew the gemstone dagger Alaana saw its crimson blade had completely dissolved. The delicate hilt in her hand seethed under the clinging black ichor, the eye gone blind.

  “Gone,” she said, as the last traces of the crystal vanished from her hand. “It’s gone. Stolen from us.”

  A screeching noise came from the ceiling of the blood-red cavern.

  “What now?” asked Alaana, craning her neck to see. Ten or twenty rounded flaps of blood-stained skin had detached from the roof. They flapped across the top of the cavern like bats, except where the flaps of skin touched each other they joined to grow in size, then split apart again.

  “What’s all this?” asked Alaana.

  She dodged as one of the bat-like creatures zoomed down at her. Its sharply pointed beak sought to draw blood from her neck. It looked down at her with two baleful, yellow eyes that were large and round as an owl’s.

  “Doubts,” said Nunavik. “These are made of doubts.”

  Alaana smacked at the darting bats, but there were too many. She struck one in midair. It was made of soft flesh rather than feather, her fingers sinking part way into the doughy flesh.

  “Doubts,” said Nunavik again. “You should never have come down here.”

  “It wasn’t by choice!”

  “In any case,” said Nunavik as he took a cut on the forehead from a foraging beak, “You’ve so many doubts my dear, especially where that sorcerer is concerned. I’m afraid we are left defenseless against them.”

  CHAPTER 42

  ANOTHER TRICK

  Alaana reeled beneath the blood-bats constant attack. Their pointed beaks dipped and fluttered away, drawing blood from her spirit-woman in a dozen places. Her physical body, left behind in the karigi for safekeeping, was anything but safe. She could feel her strength ebbing, her will to survive weakening. At any moment she might perish and remain consigned to these horrific depths forever, leaving her human body a dead, empty shell.

  “Aacckkkk!” said Nuanvik, as the bat-things continued their assault. “Acckk! Acckkkk!”

  Judging by the sound of their screams, the bat-things themselves were suffering and in pain. They twisted into strange forms, splitting up and rejoining together above their victim’s heads. Nunavik tried to fend them off with flapping flippers. Hindered by his short neck, his tusks were useless against so agile an adversary.

  Alaana also stood defenseless. These doubts were feeding off her very soul. She had accumulated so many misgivings of late, questions about her place as a shaman, her terrible mistake in releasing Vithrok, her inability to find or defeat the sorcerer. She recalled the sense of mental peace she’d possessed years ago when last she traversed the Underworld, but that type of confidence seemed forever lost to her. The situation was hopeless.

  The bat-things kept pecking at her face and hands, driving her from one side of the cavern to the other.

  “We can’t fight them,” said Nunavik weakly. “We have to get away.”

  Alaana had reached the far end of the cavern, but found no exit. The opening was sealed with black rock, impassable. Hopeless.

  “Nunavik!” she called out, but it was no use. T
he walrus had gone down beneath a mass of the stinging creatures.

  Suddenly a ferocious war cry rang out in the cavern. A lithe, brown-skinned figure had appeared in the room. Alaana recognized Nirjkila, Qo’tirgn’s demon bride.

  Nirjkila no longer put forth the appearance of a young and lovely girl, as Alaana had seen her in the physical world. Here she manifested her true nature, a demon soul. Her face was crusted with little thorns; her long, raven tresses squirmed and writhed like a bed of oily worms; her arms were unnaturally thin and stretched twice their normal length, covered with quills of coarse brown hair, and ended in long, bony fingers tipped with claws.

  Nirjkila smiled broadly at Alaana, showing row upon row of cruel, pointed teeth. She stretched forth her arms and barbed strands came shooting from the palms of her hands. As the barbs sunk deep into the flitting creatures, she used the strands to reel them in. She worked in a frenzy of butchery, slashing at the bat creatures with her blood-soaked claws. The creatures shrank back from her touch, their shrieks rising to a deafening pitch.

  Seeking shelter closer together, the bats combined into one larger beast, a hideous mound of red flesh and oozing tentacles. This monster tried to make a show of it, refusing to back away. It flapped broad, fleshy wings, though it seemed too awkward to do anything but scrabble and squirm backward. It jabbed at the demon with a nightmarish beak and a crown of sharp, curved horns.

  Nirjkila, undaunted, charged directly at the thing. She released a full-throated battle scream full of joy at bloodlust. Grabbing hold with both her hands, she sank teeth deeply into its throat. The fleshy head writhed and lurched, with the demon-wife clinging tenaciously astride, spewing crimson froth and flinging bits of steaming flesh across the cavern. At last the creature, filling the cavern with a horrific death screech, tried to break up into smaller parts again, but the demon’s slashing claws made short work of them all until nothing remained except a pile of bloody goo and strands of torn-up flesh strewn across the floor of the cavern.