Spirit Walker

by David Farland

  “So, and you are what, eighteen, twenty?” Phylomon calculated. “Then if you were human, I’d say you might recover in another ten years. I’ve found it to be a good rule of thumb—for every year we live in the care of our parents, it takes a year to recuperate.”

  Tull listened to Phylomon, and each word seemed complete, yet somehow separated from the others. Words could be strung together, but they didn’t make coherent thoughts. Tull peered into the darkness behind Phylomon. Scandal sniffled, and at his feet was the spindly arm of Little Chaa, ragged flesh still clinging to the bone.

  “Where’s Wisteria?” Tull asked.

  “In the hills, I imagine, still running in a blind panic,” Phylomon said. “Ayuvah is tracking her by scent. We should get her back in a few hours.”

  Scandal picked up Little Chaa’s arm and placed it in a bag. His face was pale, rigid with shock. “We’ll need to build a pyre,” he said, searching the ground, as if unsure how to build a simple fire. “Then go back home to tell Chaa that his son is dead.”

  Phylomon spoke. “Chaa spirit-walked this journey. He already knows.”

  The force of his words hit Tull like a blow to the gut. “Chaa knew this would happen?” He remembered how Chaa’s face had been drawn in a horrible grimace of grief after his Spirit Walk. Tull realized why now. He’d known that his son would die.

  But what does he hope to gain from this? Tull wondered. Chaa didn’t just see the future, to a degree he helped to create it. What did he gain by sacrificing his own son?

  Then a more terrifying thought hit. And what other sacrifice will we be required to make?

  Phylomon peered at Tull and said, “From the looks of it, you are fortunate to be alive. The Mastodon Men would have eaten you, but when they saw Snail Follower they went for tastier game.”

  Could that be it? Tull wondered. Did Chaa send his son to die, just so that I would survive this attack? The notion seemed impossible.

  Phylomon stood up straight, and groaned as if in pain.

  “Are you all right?” Scandal asked.

  “A little bruised,” Phylomon said, holding his ribs. “I’ll recover.”

  “They drove our mastodon off!” Scandal said, shaking his head. “We needed that like a lizard needs tits.”

  Tull sat disbelieving—Little Chaa dead, Wisteria running blindly in the woods, the mastodon lost. “What will we do?”

  Phylomon answered, “We’ll wait for Ayuvah to return with Wisteria. We can walk to Denai without the mastodon, if need be, and perhaps replace it there. But many things could go wrong. Scandal would have to be the one to buy a mastodon, and he would be forced to stay in the city for weeks. The Crawlies are notoriously curious about strangers, and if they suspect him, it could spell ruin. No, I think we had better hope we can get our mastodon back.”

  So the four men set out, following a trail in the growing dark. Phylomon led, and Tull imagined that he was searching for Wisteria. Thor began to rise, good and full, and it left a ghostly green light to see by under the trees. Moonlight would have to suffice.

  Distorted images flashed through Tull’s mind—the Mastodon Man tearing Little Chaa in half. Wisteria running. Jenks rattling chains.

  They raced through deepening darkness, Tull’s thoughts a jumble. He’d heard a big gun firing, suspected that Phylomon had had a run-in of some kind, but could not make sense of things.

  He kept remembering Chaa’s words, “You alone must catch the serpents! You alone!” And he realized dully that Chaa had meant it to the core of his soul. You alone must catch the serpents. The future Chaa had seen so terrified him that he had sacrificed his own son to avert some greater tragedy.

  Somehow, until that moment, the quest had seemed a mere lark to Tull, nebulous, not something to take seriously.

  An hour later the three men stumbled through the shadows of the redwoods, Phylomon carrying his medallion in hand, so that it glowed like a lantern, and they came on some corpses, laid out side by side, like fish on a dock.

  The swivel gun lay on the ground beside them. It was only then that Tull realized that Phylomon hadn’t been searching for Wisteria. He’d brought them to his kill site.

  “Do you recognize these men?” Phylomon asked.

  Jen Brewer, one of Scandal’s own employees, lay on his back, shot cleanly through the heart with an arrow. Caral Dye, an old sailor, and Denzel Sweetwater, the schoolteacher, had both been hacked with the sword. Saffrey and Hardy Goodman lay on the ground, their skin blackened in places, smelling of smoke, looking for all the world as if they'd been struck dead by lightning.

  Only a week before Tull had watched Hardy toss a bee’s nest into an outhouse down in the warehouse district, and Jen Brewer had come bolting out so quickly that he’d left his pants by the toilet.

  Tull gazed at Hardy’s thick beard, his staring eyes, mouth still open in terror. It was the first time Tull had seen the simpleton without a smile on his face.

  Scandal stared in blank horror, while Phylomon began searching the men. He moved efficiently, nabbing rings, checking pockets, searching for money bags. He’d obviously looted the bodies of many dead men before.

  He pulled a mere dozen cartridges for the big gun from a backpack on Hardy’s corpse, and searched in vain for more.

  Neither Tull nor Scandal would touch the men.

  Phylomon grumbled, “I should teach you all how to use the bow better. You can’t rely on a steady supply of gunpowder in these parts.”

  Dire wolves began howling deep in the forest. Phylomon glanced toward the sound and said, “Unfortunately, I only wounded one of our attackers. I suspect the wolves will take him down for us. He left quite a blood trail.”

  When Phylomon had stripped the bodies, they lugged the swivel gun back to camp, then fixed it to the wagon with its bolts.

  They had hardly got it mounted when Ayuvah returned, carrying Wisteria on his back as if she were a bag of turnips.

  He glanced toward the body of Little Chaa, lying not sixty yards off.

  Ayuvah gently set Wisteria beneath the wagon, a blanket wrapped about her. Their huge beer barrel was gone, and so she had little shelter. Tull held her as she shivered and sobbed.

  “You are lucky she is human,” Ayuvah whispered to Tull. “When she calmed down, she stopped and stayed in one place. It was not hard to find her. If she were a Pwi, she would still be running.”

  Tull nodded, and held his wife closely.

  Chapter 15: Dark Kwea

  The kwea at camp was rife with fear and sadness. Tull tried to help repack the wagon, but his overwhelming despair slowed his movements and dulled his mind. Scandal finished filling the bag with Little Chaa’s parts, and afterward Ayuvah threw himself on the ground and wept for the better part of an hour.

  Phylomon pulled Tull aside and walked with him into the woods, a few paces from camp. “You froze when you saw the Mastodon Men,” Phylomon reminded Tull. “Could you have saved the boy?”

  “No,” Tull said. “He was already gone.”

  “Good. Then you do not bear the kwea of guilt,” Phylomon said. “In the morning, we must track our mastodon. I want you to take Ayuvah away from camp tonight. The kwea of this place will be too much for him.”

  “Thank you,” Tull said, blinking in surprise. Phylomon had executed so many men so easily that he'd seemed to be without compassion. Yet now he showed a surprising depth of empathy.

  “I know what you think of me,” Phylomon said. “It’s written on your face. Believe me, I do care for you. I understand kwea, even though I am not like you. When I was young, it was common for men to take seritactates, drugs to enhance their memories. I say ‘enhance,’ yet that is not quite accurate. In those days, our memories were perfect, and a single treatment would enhance your memory for hundreds of years.

  “In those days, I made the mistake of taking a wife—a woman much like Wisteria, a slender girl with brown eyes and hair as soft as corn silk. She did not live to be sixty years old. I married her
because I was young and in love, and I thought that even though she would die of old age while I was still young, I would be comforted because I would always carry the memory of that love. I can recall perfectly every moment of every day I spent with her. The way her lower lip trembled on the day her mother died; the taste of a potato she burned when we had been married for three years and seven days; I can recall her exact words when she told me how to cook a rabbit when we had been married for twenty-two years, sixty-six days.

  “On the twenty-sixth day of the month of Harvest, in 3111, a Ship came north from Botany bearing linen and oranges. I recall the smell of oranges on her breath the morning afterward as she kissed me. When she bore our first daughter, she developed a dark purple varicose vein on her right shin. I was once surprised a hundred years later when by chance, I saw that exact shape in the vein of a maple leaf where I camped by Fish Haven River. I recall later the smell of death on her breath when I kissed her good-bye at her funeral pyre. I remember perfectly the tinge of violet in her face as we dropped the torches.

  “From moment to moment, only two things remain the same—my love for her and the devastating emptiness I have felt ever since I lost her. This is as close as a human can come to feeling kwea.”

  Ayuvah said, “I think that would be as bad as losing a brother.”

  “Oh, I’ve lost a brother too,” Phylomon said. “A hundred and fifty years ago. We had grown apart for years, and I seldom saw him, and one day I realized that I had neither seen him nor heard from him for a decade. I traveled the land for six years looking for him, never really sure he was dead. The slavers killed him, I believe. He had a red skin very similar to mine. His symbiote was called a pyroderm, for it let him burn things with fire at will, and I keep hoping that someday I will find his skin half-buried, like the husk of a snake under a rock in the forest. Even after all this time, his symbiote will not have rotted away, you see. Yes, I have lost brothers, parents, children, lovers.…”

  Phylomon paused. He raised his eyes to the heavens, and Tull saw the blue man's fill with memories as unknowable as the distant stars.

  Phylomon continued, “Among the Eridani whose warships circle our world, they say we are all a million beings struggling to become one man. Yet it only happens as we draw closest to attaining a single, pure emotion. They say there is only one hate. And there is only one joy. And there is only one ecstasy. And to the extent that we share that emotion in its fullness, we become one person. If you and your lover share perfect ecstasy, you are no longer separate people, but in the minds of the Eridani you have become one. We are not Eridani, thinking with a communal mind, but I am like you, Tull and Ayuvah, because I, too, feel. Yet I shall never feel emotions as powerfully as you.” Phylomon stood another moment, reflecting.

  “There is a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, and it is the seat of emotions. A Pwi has a much larger hypothalamus than a human, and the Pwi lead an emotional life so rich and complex that I—and possibly even you, Tull Genet—cannot fathom it.

  “When a Pwi hunts near a rock and is frightened by a rattlesnake, the incident arouses such anxiety that for several hours he will tremble while the incident fixes in his mind, and the memory of the rock and the snake and the terror become inseparably linked, so that he will forever avoid that rock, fearing that the same snake will lurk nearby.

  “The same man with an empty belly might find a tree with hazelnuts and fill himself. The tree and the pleasure of fulfillment become so intoxicating that for hours he holds it in his mind, until he can never think of passing that area without remembering the pleasure of the hazelnuts beneath the tree. It is a simple and valuable mechanism that helped Neanderthals eke out an existence on Earth thousands of years ago.”

  Tull gave a bitter laugh, wondering if Ayuvah could understand English well enough to follow the conversation. “You make it sound as if kwea is a blessing to the Pwi.”

  Darkness settled among the trees, and crickets sounded an unseen chorus. The smell of leafmould filled the air, and the light of Thor cast the mists of the forest in a greenish glow.

  “To the Pwi, yes,” said Phylomon “But not to you. They may feel more deeply than you do, but not in all aspects. You see, the Pwi are protected to some degree from the ravages of terror that afflict you, Tull Genet. Their brains secrete endorphins that diminish the worst terrors. They call themselves ‘the Smiling People’ because their brains are steeped in intoxicants supplied by their own bodies. But from the way you reacted to the Mastodon Man, I suspect that the Pwi endorphins your brain produces bind poorly to the chemoreceptors in your too-human brain. You are unsheltered from some harmful kwea. It is a common affliction among the Tcho-Pwi. Rarely do men like you thrive.”

  Tull had only met another Tcho-Pwi once—a small girl who was sickly; a girl with dull eyes who could not speak. “What do you mean?” His heart hammered. He knew what Phylomon meant.

  “Being half-human and half-Pwi,” Phylomon said, “you are slave to both sequential memories and emotional memories. Few of your kind are emotionally resilient enough to adjust to this. The fear and despair overwhelm them. Your father gave you the kwea you felt tonight. It is a powerful and dangerous thing. But you handle it well. I think it much more likely that you will be destroyed by love.” Phylomon said these last words as if they were mere observation. “Yet I hope better for you. Sincerely.”

  Tull watched the blue man, so tall that he seemed deformed, alien. It was not surprising that such a man thought in alien ways. It was surprising that Tull somehow felt the man to be his brother under the skin.

  Ayuvah and Tull both slept away from camp that night, but at dawn they returned. In a short ceremony, the party cremated what was left of Little Chaa. A flock of crows came and circled the smoke as it rose to heaven, and Tull could not help but feel that Little Chaa, released from his body, had called the crows to bear witness of his passage.

  Wisteria spent her morning beside the party’s wagon, wrapped in a blanket, nursing her scratches and bruises. During the night, no one had been able to see well how much of the food had been destroyed, but now it was plain that nearly every barrel, every sack had been ripped open, and much of the food was unsalvageable.

  Tull helped clean up as best he could, scooping beans into broken kegs.

  In some deep grass a hundred feet from the wagon, he found a bag of platinum eagles—at least a thousand of them.

  “Where did these come from?” he asked.

  Scandal answered quickly. “I brought them.”

  Phylomon offered, “A fortune like that will do you no good out here.”

  Scandal hesitated. “We’re going to Denai,” he said. “The inns there are famed for their cuisine.”

  “I had heard that they are only famed for their whores,” Phylomon said. “The Craal slavers breed their whores for beauty, much as other men breed cattle. In over forty generations, not one of Denai’s madams has been sold outside the city.”

  “Ayaah,” Scandal blushed. “Well, let us just say that an innkeeper must know how to serve many kinds of dishes.”

  Tull looked at the coins in wonder. Scandal had ostensibly borrowed money for the trip, yet here he had enough for a man like Scandal to live comfortably for the rest of his life. With such wealth, he could have bought a fine ship. The innkeeper could not plan to spend more than a night or two in Denai, yet in that short time he would spend his life's fortune on whores!

  “Let’s find our mastodon,” Tull said.

  Ayuvah offered hopefully, in that Pwi way of his, “Perhaps Snail Follower escaped the Mastodon Men and needs someone to show him the way back to camp.”

  Phylomon nodded. “I think that would be prudent, but not everyone should go.”

  “What?” Scandal said. “You’d leave me here with Wisteria?”

  “Actually,” Phylomon said, “I think Tull should stay with his wife. I’m not so sure the woman is safe with you.”

  “But, but—” Scandal objected.

/>   Tull looked at the camp, the food on the ground. He could not help but recall the perverse kwea the Mastodon Man had emanated. The way he had felt so helpless and weak before it. He suddenly felt that he knew what Chaa had wanted from him, why the wizard had let his son die. “I must come with you,” he said. “To face the Mastodon Men.”

  Shortly after breakfast, Tull and Ayuvah went down to the pond to prepare for the hunt by performing a Neanderthal hunting rite. It seemed only right to have Ayuvah lead the hunting party.

  Ayuvah threw three stones into the water and watched the ripples move over the pond. Then he squatted by the bank and closed his eyes. Tull did likewise.

  “Think only thoughts of kindness for the Mastodon Men,” Ayuvah counseled Tull. “Let peace emanate from you, just as the ripples emanate from the stone. You must hunt with this attitude. If your prey smells your bloodlust, they will hide from you. Also, it does not help to be picky. Many times I have gone to hunt for grouse, only to find a silver fox in the bush. Animal Spirits give themselves as they will, and we should not be choosy. This day, we hunt for Snail Follower, but perhaps another mastodon will give itself to us. If that is what the Animal Spirits decide, so be it.”

  Ayuvah sat with his eyes closed, and Tull wondered at his strength. He could tell that his friend grieved for Little Chaa, yet Ayuvah held it in. They sat for nearly half an hour.

  Tull watched the water and tried to cleanse his thoughts. A giant green dragonfly with a two-foot wingspan hovered over the pond. Tull looked up, startled by the buzzing of its wings, and saw on the other side of the pond, at the edge of the forest, a dark gray dire wolf watching them, panting, its tongue hanging out. The wolf yawned.

  Ayuvah opened his eyes, looked at the wolf. “My Animal Guide is with me,” he said. “It is time for us to go.”

  Tull looked back at the wolf. It stepped back into the trees, and was gone.

  A few moments later, the men began tracking.

  The Mastodon Men had battered Snail Follower, leaving a trail of ripped ferns and bloodied tree limbs. The mastodon had scored the thick humus of the forest floor, running blindly one moment, turning to charge its attackers the next. There had been fourteen Mastodon Men in the band. For some arcane purpose, the Mastodon Men had also taken the group’s beer keg, and one of them rolled it along behind the party, obscuring the tracks.