Spirit Walker

by David Farland

  Phylomon shook his head, “Those are children’s stories, Friend,” he said, lifting the simpleton to his feet. “My blue skin can’t be removed so easily. In ancient times all Starfarers wore them, just as you wear leather and cotton and wool. But it is not clothing, it is a symbiote, an animal with a mind and will of its own that drinks my sweat to stay alive. In return it protects me, heals me, and extends my life.”

  “Then maybe you could loan it to her,” the farmer begged, “for just awhile. Maybe it could protect her!”

  Phylomon shook his head sadly. “If your daughter had a skin like mine, she too would be immune to disease. But I can no more remove this blue hide than you can remove your own skin. I’m sorry, but my touch won’t heal your daughter. I have no magic powers.”

  “What can I do?” the farmer begged, and he fell to sobbing.

  Phylomon lightly touched the man’s shoulder. “Perhaps I can help her some other way. I know a bit of healing lore. Stay for a bit. I’ll come to your home as soon as possible and do what I can. But now, I must prepare for sunset,” Phylomon sighed, and then led the Dryad to his room.

  At sunset the Pwi threw a party in Phylomon’s welcome, as if it were a holiday, and many of them painted themselves blue and danced through the streets with flutes and drums. They tied streamers to every tree and brought their finest lamps down to the docks to see by as they listened to Phylomon's words, for it was said that his counsel was legendary.

  Wisteria watched them gather from her home, at first, but soon joined the crowd, staying off to its edges. The fine day promised a cool evening, which was welcome after such a hot summer. The nights were not crisp yet, nor even cool, but the promise of fall could be felt for the first time this year.

  Someone brought a beer keg to the dockside and the Pwi roasted three pigs in a great bonfire in the middle of the street. Everyone began to sing, and laughter filled the air.

  Something in the festivities frightened Wisteria. There was a frenetic energy to it, a wildness to it. Most people seemed oblivious to the fact that Phylomon had asked the men to come dressed in war gear, and only a few Pwi brought their shields and war clubs.

  As darkness grew, so did the throng.

  Well over six hundred men and women with screaming babies and tired, ecstatic children eventually gathered. The Pwi celebrated, and the smell of roasting pork and beer filled the air. The music and laughter swelled so that soon the gaiety spread among the whole crowd. Everyone showed up—even old Byrum Saman, who’d been too sick to move from his pallet all summer, had been carried down to the docks. Two ships were still moored in the harbor.

  Woden—a small white moon like a blind staring eye—had risen, and Phylomon’s pale skin gleamed dully as he entered the crowd. The Dryad stayed in their room. Phylomon carried his long, thin sword in its scabbard.

  Wisteria waited in the crowd, and eventually her mother and father joined her. Tull Genet came and stood behind Wisteria, a bit too close. She couldn’t help but be conscious of him, waiting, as if after five years she might once again fall into his arms.

  It was so Pwi of him.

  The blue man appeared tired, and the crowd was disorganized. The men did not march in their war gear and line up in front of him like a real army might. It had been twenty years since they’d mustered, and those few who remembered to dress in battle gear seemed embarrassed to have pulled out old war shields with cracked leather, maces that had never been swung in battle. Among the crowd, only two men had guns—crude single-shot rifles.

  Phylomon, moved by some internal clock, decided that the time was right and marched down to the wharf, where he stood with his back to the water and began to speak.

  “People of Smilodon Bay,” Phylomon said loudly, “I have asked your men to come in war gear because you are in danger. Here in Smilodon Bay, you are far from Craal, and perhaps you are not aware of your enemy’s power, or the length of their reach. We here in the Rough number under sixty thousand, yet if you combined the armies of the Seven Lords of Craal, you would find that they have over six million men and women who bear arms. Many of these slavers are not sometime warriors—they fight with the sword day in and day out, and they kill one another for a living.

  “In the past, the great distance between Smilodon Bay and Craal has served to protect you. But the Rough is shrinking. Every year, the borders of Craal move closer. Every year the slavers’ kingdom and power grows. If the Seven Lords were not so busy fighting among themselves, they would have swallowed you long ago.

  “Soon—perhaps in a year, perhaps ten—the slavers will come and take you anyway. I’ve known them long enough so that I can tell you what will happen. They see no difference between owning people like you and owning herds of swine.” He pointed at two of the younger boys, both humans. “You and you, the slavers will castrate you before your mothers' eyes, and you will be made house servants. The slavers think it no more indecent to castrate you than to castrate a bull.” He pointed to Wisteria and two other young women, “You will be branded and turned into whores. You Pwi will be shackled and put to work in the mines and fields, and you,” he said, pointing out several grandmothers, along with Byrum Saman on his sick bed, “They’ll smother you with no more thought than if they slaughtered a dog that had outlived its usefulness.

  “I have spent my entire life fighting the slavers, but some of you seem to be ignorant of their crimes. Two years ago, in Craal, I collected testimonies from slaves detailing the accounts of their capture. Some of them were taken by some of your townsmen….” A woman shrieked in disbelief. Others stiffened and looked around, studying the eyes of neighbors. Some muttered, and the sound of shifting feet threatened to drown out Phylomon’s voice, so he shouted, “Those slaves shall be vindicated this night!”

  Phylomon held three slips of paper. He stroked the middle of his seven medallions, and it began to gleam like a firefly. A Pwi woman gasped at this sign of magic. He read, “Six years ago, I, Molliron Hart, was taken slave in Smilodon Bay. I was walking down the road just after dark when Jassic Goodman and Denneli Goodman caught me and raped me. They carried me to the hold of a merchant ship and sent me here.”

  The crowd roared in anger. Denneli Goodman, a middle-aged fat man, tried to make a run for it. A woman stepped in front of him, and he slapped her in the head with a mace, cracking her skull. Several men grabbed the Goodman brothers from all sides, disarmed them, and dragged them shrieking and kicking toward Phylomon. The injured woman bled profusely and sat on the ground, stunned, while a dozen people tried to help tend to her wounds.

  “Here’s the ones that did it!” someone shouted. Wisteria stared with her mouth open. It's started, she thought. It has started. She was not surprised to find that these Goodman brothers were slavers. From her childhood she recalled that Jassic and Denneli were two of the meanest men in town.

  Phylomon stepped in front of Denneli Goodman, a tall thin man with a haggard face. Denneli stared at the ground, and he shook as if with a chill. Phylomon asked, “What have you to say for yourself?”

  “Does it matter?” Denneli asked. “You caught us. I’m a dead man.”

  “Dead you are,” Phylomon said. He turned to the townspeople and said just loud enough to be heard by all, “When the first Starfarers fell from the skies, there were 312 men and women. You are all descended from them. In the past thousand years your bloodlines have crossed and recrossed countless times. You look at the person standing next to you, and though he may be a stranger, you share so many genes that he is as much a brother as if you were born of the same mother. I myself have fathered five children in the past eight hundred years. Most of you could not cite your genealogy without finding that I am one of your forebearers. When you sell one another into slavery, you sell your brothers and sisters. The people I kill this night, are my own children!”

  With that he spun and jabbed his sword faster than the eye could see. Denneli staggered back, and at first Wisteria thought that the blue man had missed, but
a ragged hole appeared in Denneli’s throat; blood spurted as if from a broken pipe. The stricken man began coughing blood.

  Denneli’s children shrieked, and his wife fainted. Phylomon turned to the crowd: “Does Molliron Hart have any brothers or sisters, any relatives at all?”

  One woman shouted, “Me!”

  “Then in the morning, you will go to the homes of these men, and take possession. Their homes and everything within them are yours. The families of slavers will not profit from these condemned men’s crimes.”

  Phylomon stepped up to Jassic, a robust man in his mid-thirties with a thick beard. He could not have been much more than twenty when he raped and sold Molliron Hart. Jassic was watching six directions at once, looking for a place to run; three townsmen held him from behind, and one man had put a noose around Jassic’s neck. He fought the noose, and white spittle foamed from his mouth.

  “Anything to say for yourself?” Phylomon asked.

  Jassic’s lips trembled. He blurted, “Wait a minute! You can’t do this to me! Wait! Grab him, boys!”

  Wisteria searched the crowd. Though several men shifted their feet, none of the “boys” came to Jassic’s rescue. Both his wife and his mistress covered their faces with their hands. Phylomon watched Jassic’s eyes, trying to see who Jassic called to, then rammed his sword up under Jassic’s chin and into his brain.

  Phylomon read his second letter: “I, Javan Tech—”

  Wisteria heard a shriek rise from her own throat, condemning her.

  Her father shouted beside her and drew a knife as he backed away from Phylomon. They had stood near the back of the crowd. Subconsciously, Wisteria had placed herself here so that her father could make a hasty retreat if need be, yet Beremon tripped in his hurry to run.

  Tull Genet, that damned half-Neanderthal, grabbed Beremon by the shoulder to steady him, then he must have realized he’d caught a slaver, for he swung Beremon in a great arc, throwing back into the crowd and followed after, still blindly clutching Beremon’s doe-skin jacket.

  Beremon’s hands suddenly emptied as he dropped his knife to the road. Wisteria’s mother, Elyssa, fainted, and Wisteria caught her as she fell.

  Several young men dragged Beremon forward, and Tull clutched Beremon’s jacket in confusion, still surprised at having captured a slaver.

  Phylomon continued, “In Smilodon Bay, while I was walking up the hill at night, Beremon Altair caught me. He and his wife Elyssa kept me in their basement, and sold me as a slave a week later.”

  Several people gasped in surprise. Two men took Elyssa from Wisteria’s arms and looked up at Phylomon. “Not the woman!” someone shouted.

  Phylomon shook his head, condemning Wisteria’s mother to death.

  The young men shoved Beremon to his knees, forced him to kneel in the blood of two dead men. Tull stared at Wisteria in dismay, his face drained white, and she knew that Tull had heard her scream. He knew of her guilt. With a word to Phylomon, Tull could also condemn her to death.

  Part of her knew that she should die, and she fought the urge to scream, to confess. She’d only been a child at the time. Perhaps she would gain forgiveness. But she was too much of a coward to speak.

  Wisteria felt as if she’d been staggered by a physical blow. Every muscle in her chest seemed to spasm in pain, forcing the air from her lungs in tight, ragged breaths. She was afraid for her parents, and blamed herself. She should have known Beremon would stumble into Tull.

  Phylomon waited a moment until Elyssa regained consciousness, and several men held her lightly.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Phylomon asked. Beremon began weeping and shaking his head, then his back straightened and he seemed to regain his dignity. “I only did it once. My wife is not to blame.”

  A woman, Javan Tech’s mother, shouted at Beremon and Elyssa, “Damn you! May God screw you for what you did!”

  Beremon stiffened at the curse and said bitterly, “I think he just has.”

  Phylomon looked into Elyssa’s eyes. “Did you help take Javan Tech slave? Did you keep her in your house?”

  He did not need an answer. Her face was drained pale with guilt. “Yes,” she said.

  Phylomon put the sword to Beremon’s throat and asked, “Madam, please turn your head.”

  Trembling, Elyssa turned her head to the side and began to weep. Her gray hair looked almost golden in the torchlight, as if in her final moments, she was restored to youth. She peeked at Phylomon’s blade from the corner of her eyes.

  “Please,” Phylomon said, “This is hard enough for me. I don’t want you to see it.”

  Elyssa nodded slightly and closed her eyes. Phylomon jerked his sword up, away from Beremon, and jabbed Elyssa under the throat, nearly severing her head in one quick thrust, and the audience groaned as one to see the woman die.

  “Thank you,” Beremon told Phylomon. “That was kind of you.”

  Wisteria saw real gratitude in her father’s eyes, but there was no compassion in the blue man now.

  Phylomon swiftly struck with his sword, piercing Beremon’s right lung, then kicked Beremon off the dock, where he floundered a moment in the deep waters of the bay.

  Wisteria cried out. Her mother lay sprawled on her back, her head held to her body by only a flap of skin, as she stared at the sky. Wisteria could hear her father in the water, splashing his hands feebly as he tried to stay afloat.

  Her legs felt weak, and she dropped to her knees and listened to the splashing, a single cough. “God!” she pleaded, “God! He's drowning! Stop this!” Yet no one moved to help her father. She staggered forward to save him, and someone caught her from behind, wrapping strong arms around her, and lifted her into the air. She kicked him in the shins and twisted around.

  It was Mayor Goodman. “Say nothing!” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t step into this mess. Not here! Not now! Later!”

  She realized what might happen if she tried to save her father. Beremon quit splashing as he sank beneath the waves. She held her breath, waited for the sound of him surfacing, gasping for breath. But she heard only the lapping of water against the docks. The bay became placid.

  Elyssa lay staring up at the moon. Wisteria sank to the ground and began gasping for air, trying to scream.

  Phylomon read from the last slip of paper and came up with five names, and three more people died—another Goodman brother, an old woman, and one of the scraggly seamen Jassic had called to for help. Another perpetrator of the crime had died of a fall seven years earlier, and the fifth had long since sailed away.

  When he was finished, Phylomon stepped back from the crowd, neck and shoulders hunched as if exhausted to the bone. He said softly, “It never becomes easier.”

  The merriment and celebration among the Pwi had long since been crushed. Phylomon wended his way through the crowd, a pariah in the town he had come to save, and everyone stepped back, mothers clutching their children, all of them staring hard at the blue man.

  Wisteria felt desolate. As a child, she’d feared that retribution would come, that people would find out that she had carried food for Javan Tech.

  Finally, retribution had come.

  Seven townsmen were dead. Some people in the crowd wept with relief at finding that lost friends and family members, though taken as slaves, had been alive only recently. Others wept in bitterness because fathers and friends, husbands and brothers had been slaughtered before their eyes. Yet no one spoke against what had happened; no one said it was unjust. That hurt Wisteria most of all.

  A hundred yards down the road, Phylomon turned to the crowd, and for the first time his soft voice carried an edge. “Many of you children will grow up hating and fearing me—fearing that I will come back again. I will rob you slavers of your sleep. And that fear of discovery, fear of justice, is what this world needs.”

  That night, Wisteria Altair lost her home to the Tech family. All thirty-seven of them scoured the house, pulling out the beds and furniture, the jewelry and money
, the food and family books. Wisteria wept uncontrollably.

  By lantern light Javan’s older sister Devina Tech came and reached out to Wisteria. For a moment Wisteria thought Devina was seeking to comfort her, but instead she grabbed Wisteria’s platinum necklace and savagely tore it from her neck.

  “I’ll take that, and the earrings,” Devina said, grabbing at Wisteria’s ears. Wisteria wrenched away and slapped Devina in the nose. The older woman looked at Wisteria and her face twisted in rage. “It’s small enough payment for my sister,” Devina said. She reached out as if she would pull Wisteria’s hair, and Wisteria knocked her hand away.

  Wisteria took off the earrings, handed them to Devina. “Here,” she said. “You’ve now been amply paid for your sister. I’m sure it eases your loss.”

  Devina seemed to catch herself, regain a semblance of dignity. “You can keep the clothes on your back,” Devina said, as if bestowing a gift, and she hurried back to the house.

  Several younger family members fought over booty. They were worse than junkyard dogs.

  After so many years away from town, Wisteria realized that she didn’t really know these people anymore, yet their actions revealed their nature. For years Wisteria had felt guilty for what her family had done to Javan, had found it hard to look others in the face. Tonight, the guilt dies, she thought.

  Within an hour old grandmother Tech stood back in the street and cackled, “That’s my house! I’ll live in the finest house on this coast!”

  Afterward, in the dark, Wisteria wandered through town, crying softly. She had not eaten lunch after the blue man’s arrival, and had forgone dinner in her worry.

  Her stomach began to cramp from hunger. She wandered the streets and found that down by the docks the partygoers had left the carcasses of the pigs still cooking. Many lanterns still burned, and she could make out the streamers hanging from trees.

  Finding herself alone, she gagged down a bite of the burned meat, drank a single swallow from the barrel of beer.