Spirit Walker

by David Farland

  She carried herself with the dignity and haughtiness that he had only seen among three classes of people—the Pirate Lords of Bashevgo, the Slave Lords of Craal, and the Dwea—the greatest of sorcerers.

  The old woman hopped into the wagon, far too easily, and poked at the women, studied their faces.

  “Oh yes, they have been locked into dreams,” the crone said. She placed a hand upon Tirilee’s heart, turned and smiled at the men. “Here, you take her dream,” she said.

  And suddenly a gust of wind slapped Phylomon, staggering him like a blow. He was back at Frowning Idols, looking up into the face of a monolith with down turned lips. A bloody corpse, with the flesh peeled off, showing striations of fat and muscle, was lying atop him. The corpse was wet and sticky, as if freshly skinned, and because it had no eyelids, its dark brown eyes were unblinking. For a brief moment, Phylomon felt the weight of the corpse crushing him, crushing his budding breasts, smelled the raw meat, the tangy scent of blood, felt its sticky fleshless organ searching between his legs, probing for an opening.

  “No!” he shouted. And the dream fled, but a sickening sense of horror lingered. He found himself sitting on the ground. Tull lay in the grass, clutching his legs together as if to protect his virginity. Ayuvah was blindly crawling away. Scandal sat holding his belly.

  “It was a bad dream,” the old woman said. “Too much for one young girl to hold. It is gone from her now—since you all have borne a portion of it. Sometimes a pain is so great it cannot be relieved until it is shared.”

  Phylomon had met Dweas three times before. He remembered a man from his youth, a Pwi who could make water flow uphill or bubble from the ground at will.

  He could not explain such wonders away. There was no scientific rationale for it. Phylomon suspected that each person experiences and comprehends reality slightly differently, and that at times a reality believed in by one can impinge upon the rest of mankind.

  In other words, somewhat doggedly, he had to admit that he believed in magic.

  He often wondered: Do Spirit Walkers actually see the future, or do they merely participate in the shared visions of reality of those around them until they see what those shared visions will shape?

  The old woman looked at Wisteria, touched her lightly. “This one—” and then Phylomon found himself in the pond, treading oily black water, desperately trying to breathe from a ragged hole in his throat. He looked around for help, but in the water beside him were only crushed Pwi children, eyes looking up from smashed faces. It was nighttime, and guttering torches shone on faces of those on shore.

  The people of Smilodon Bay, all stood with their hands folded, watching him, smiling down. He wanted to make them pay, make them pay for their cruelty, but deep inside he knew he would die if he tried to fight them, and he was too weak to take revenge, and he had no time for revenge, for water was rushing in through the hole in his throat, and there was no hope, no time, for revenge, and that seemed the saddest thing of all.

  Then the dream was gone, and Phylomon sat, gasping for air gratefully.

  “They will sleep now,” the old woman said, and as if to accentuate her words, for the first time in days Wisteria and Tirilee both quit whimpering and breathed with the deep inhalations of profound sleep. “In the morning, they will remember nothing. For the mind is not meant to hold dreams so horrible.” The old woman began walking downhill, into the darkness.

  “Wait!” Scandal shouted, “Don’t you want to sleep here tonight, where it is safe?”

  The old Pwi woman looked back up the hill. “It is never safe to sleep next to me,” she said sadly, and ambled off into the darkness.

  Phylomon jumped from the wagon, went to the brush to find her, offer her some food at least, but when he got to the brush, he found the woman gone, and when he looked on the ground for her tracks, he found none, and realized that the woman was no shape changer at all. She had come to them only in a dream.

  Chapter 24: Chains of Iron

  Tirilee woke in the back of the wagon and saw Tull beside her, gently combing Wisteria’s hair. She felt weak and ill to her stomach. Beside Tull was a cup of tea, some biscuits and honey. Tirilee groaned.

  Tull turned to gaze at her. The big Tcho-Pwi was much taller than she, with a massive chest. “Can I have some drink?” she asked. She could have reached for it herself, but asking for food was an old habit, one built after years of being kept in a slave pen. Take only after asking.

  Tull picked up the cup. He held her head up, helped her to drink. “It was for Wisteria,” he explained, “But she hasn’t wakened.”

  “I’m grateful,” she said in Pwi. “Where are we? What happened?”

  “You were taken captive by the Okanjaras,” Tull answered. “They drugged you.”

  Tirilee felt a slight nausea. She could recall nothing except the face of a man, a man in a dark tent.

  “Here, have some of these,” Tull said, and he held a biscuit up for her. She let him feed her and watched him. She looked down at his legs, to the white scars around his ankles. The scars were thick, brutal.

  “You’ve been kept in chains,” she said. “I was sadly kept too.”

  When she was five, Tirilee had lived in the aspen grove, in a small house made of trees covered with sod. Levarran, her mother, had been a slave to the trees, tending them night and day, and one winter day while her mother was out hunting for a rabbit, Greman Dern came.

  He was a heavy man—a slovenly trapper with sagging jowls and a week’s worth of beard. Tirilee did not speak to him, for her mother had told her never to speak with humans. But Greman quietly asked about her mother in soft tones, speaking the language of the Pwi.

  When Levarran returned, Greman greeted her. “I always wondered what happened after that night,” Greman said, “figured that by now you'd have dropped a cub or two.”

  “Here is your daughter,” Levarran had said, motioning to Tirilee.

  “I figured,” Greman answered.

  “How long will you stay?” Her voice was hungry for him, and that had made Tirilee wonder. Levarran had often claimed she did not love Greman, but her voice betrayed something like love, a hunger for his presence.

  Greman shrugged. “Been trapping silver fox and mink down on the south fork. The area is about trapped out. I thought maybe I’d stay the winter. If that is all right with you?”

  “A winter is not long,” Levarran answered.

  “If I feel welcome enough, I could stay longer,” Greman said.

  For as long as Tirilee could remember, she had slept cuddled in her mother’s arms. But that night, Greman took her place, and Tirilee crawled to a corner of the dark room while Greman grunted and sweated, making love to Tirilee’s mother.

  He stayed for a week. Until the food ran out and a major snowstorm passed over. Tirilee left the hut to pee, and it was cold and white in the mountains; the touch of the snow pricked her.

  She heard her mother scream, “Tirilee” from within the hut—a cry of genuine terror—and Tirilee ran for the hut. She opened the flap and met Greman coming out. Before her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the hut, Greman grabbed her and pulled her back outside.

  Tirilee shouted for her mother, but heard no answer. Greman threw Tirilee over his shoulder and held her legs as he carried her downhill. Tirilee cried out for her mother again and again. For nearly an hour he carried her downhill, and she wriggled and tried to kick free. Finally, he stopped and set her down in front of him, holding her with his great heavy hands.

  “You quit kicking at me, God bugger you, or I’ll do you. I’ll do you good!” Tirilee had no idea what those words meant, but they scared her. They did not scare her half as much as Greman’s face—dried blood was spattered across it.

  “Mama,” Tirilee said softly.

  “You got no mother anymore,” Greman said. “And you best quit kicking at me, or I’ll have you thrown in a pit for bear bait. You understand?” Tirilee didn’t answer. “Good girl,” Greman said. “N
ow I’m going to take care of you. You’re worth a lot of money.”

  From that day forward, she’d lived in one sort of a cage or another until Phylomon set her free.

  Telling Tull of her captivity had been stupid, she realized, for he knew of it already. What she’d wanted to tell him was … that when he touched her, she felt strange.

  When she’d touched her lips to his arm, her lips had burned. She realized that what she wanted to tell him was that she wanted to do it again. She’d never felt this way before.

  Tull sat quietly and fed the biscuits to her, and when she finished one, she licked his finger, and her tongue burned at his touch. Tull gasped, and his eyes widened. He jerked his hand away, yet he stayed, breathing heavily and gazing at her as if transfixed.

  Tirilee realized that Tull could not move, that he was like a rabbit in a corner, too frightened to run. Or maybe he wanted her. She took his hand, held it for a moment, then kissed it tenderly. The touch of his skin burned, yet it was not painful. It was a pleasant burning.

  Tull sat and let her do this, and his eyes widened, and he looked afraid. “You, you don’t know what you’re doing!” he said, yanking his hand away.

  Tirilee shuddered to lose it. “I … I only want to kiss your hand,” she said. “I only want to touch you.”

  Tull backed away from her bed, spilling the last of the tea upon the floor of the barrel in his haste. Wisteria was still sleeping heavily.

  Tirilee lay for a long time, thinking about Levarran. Her mother had made a mistake in taking a human lover during her Time of Devotion. Humans were cold and greedy.

  A Pwi lover would have been better, someone who would remain in love. When my mating frenzy comes, Tirilee decided, I will take a Man of the Pwi. She considered taking Tull, but Wisteria and Tull had both been kind to her. She saw how Tull loved his wife, and Tirilee did not want to take that from him. No, she told herself, I will not take Tull. I will find another. Someone like him.

  Standing atop the wagon, Tull could look down the hillside into the Mammoth Run Plateau with its tan plains. A great dark line of bison moved south in the distance, and closer to home, a dragon circled above the valley floor.

  The sight of it chilled him. The memories of Mammoth Run Plateau carried such a perverse kwea that he only had to look up into the sky or toward the mountains to feel a greater sense of ease.

  It almost made him want to laugh, the idea that he could turn his face to Craal and actually feel a sense of release. Tull considered what had happened in the barrel. The Dryad had unnerved him with her caress. He’d sat beside his wife and let the creature kiss his hand, and her touch had filled him with such lust that he was almost too weak to leave. He told himself that it must not happen again.

  Ayuvah had been helping pack the camp. He looked up now. “How does the sky feel?”

  “The kwea of the sky feels good,” Tull said.

  “It feels good for me, too. We will push this wagon up a bit closer to the sky. The kwea will be even better up there.”

  They pushed their wagon until early afternoon, following the folds of valleys where rainwater had carved paths. After a few miles, they stopped by a pool. Upon the hill before them was a tower made of light green Benbow glass, a single great winding stair that went up five thousand feet.

  The group had been traveling toward it for days, yet none of them had seen it, for it was far too narrow. When Phylomon pointed it out, they all stopped to stare in wonder.

  “Why it’s Crazy Man Stairs!” Scandal said in delight. “Ayaah, I’ve heard that it was up here somewhere.”

  “Is that what they call it now?” Phylomon asked.

  “Yes,” Ayuvah added, “only a crazy man would climb up there.”

  “It was made by a man I knew long ago, an artist named Huron Tech,” Phylomon said. “A very curious man. He called it the Worm Tower.”

  “He never finished it,” Scandal said. “I hear there’s nothing at the top.”

  “Oh, he finished it,” Phylomon said. “There is something at the top, though not everyone can see it, for the tower was not made to hold anything or go anywhere, it is simply art.”

  “Hell of a waste of Benbow glass, if you ask me,” Scandal spat. “Someday, someone will figure out how to cut it up and cart if off and do something decent with it.”

  Phylomon looked at the Pwi, who simply stared at the tower in awe. “We’ll need to stay here for a day or two until the women are strong enough to help us push the wagon over the mountains,” Phylomon said. “We’ll climb the Worm Tower tomorrow, at sunrise.”

  “You’ll not get me up there,” Scandal said.

  “I wouldn’t dare try to lug you up those steps,” Phylomon countered. “You can stay here to care for the women. Only the young men need go. But first, I must clear the brush around the tower.”

  That afternoon, Phylomon set fire to the ridge above camp. The evening wind blowing up the mountain pulled the flames and smoke uphill, and the blaze quickly consumed the dense brush and grass around the tower, exposing hundreds of thousands of tiny metal plates and towers, many rising a dozen feet in the air while others stood only inches off the ground. Phylomon spent the rest of the day clearing dead trees and burning them to nothing.

  That night, both Wisteria and Tirilee got out of their beds and ate dinner. They sat together and Wisteria brushed Tirilee’s hair and they laughed like giddy young girls. Neither of them remembered Frowning Idols, and both seemed unconcerned by the lapse in their memories.

  Chapter 25: Journey of the Worm

  When Tull rose up before dawn, the ash on the hillside had turned a pale gray, almost white, so that in the semi-darkness, the ash looked as if it were snow.

  Phylomon told them, “We must begin the journey at dawn so we can reach the top of the tower by midday. We must take no food, and only the smallest flasks of water.”

  Then he led them along slowly.

  To reach the tower, they had to tread through a maze of small valleys, past strange rocks in odd formations. Pieces of metal and glass jutted from the ground at extreme angles. When they reached the bottom of the tower, the land all around it was cluttered with twisted shapes of metal and glass, as if an alien mind had ringed the tower with an equally bizarre forest.

  The bottom of the tower was a simple glass pole with glass stairs leading around it, spiraling up. The Benbow glass was tougher than diamond of course, and could not be destroyed by heat, even a lightning strike.

  An ornate rail rose up on each side of the stairs. Engraved upon the railing were countless peoples—Pwi dressed in ancient headgear, Starfarers with tall lean bodies, Hukm with broad furry chests and leather faces, simple humans dressed as traders, slavers, workers. Men and women, people of all ages—all running, crawling, hobbling up the tower. At the bottom stair, Phylomon scraped the dirt to reveal some ornate letters: “The Journey of the Worm.”

  Phylomon waited for the sun to strike the bottom stair. For the first time that fall, Tull could see his breath in the cold air. His “soul cloud,” as the Pwi called it.

  When the sun struck the bottom stair so that it shone along its whole length like a green and golden rod, they began to climb. Phylomon raced ahead and urged the others to hurry. For the first few minutes, Tull was so occupied with trying to match the grueling pace that he did not notice his surroundings below him, but then he looked down and gasped in surprise. With the sun rising, the rays of light caught upon the small scraps of metal that jutted from the ground, the strangely shaped rocks, and small hills. The light coming from the east threw shadows upon the gray ash, and the shadows resolved themselves into the figures of two lovers, naked on the ground, a woman lying atop a man, with one leg draped over him.

  Tull thought it a clever trick, but Phylomon pressed them forward, and inch by inch as the sun rose over the mountains, the shadows moved, recombining into new shapes. Tull watched the lovers disintegrate, and suddenly as he ran he realized that he had made an error—he had onl
y seen a small part of the picture—for the lovers resolved into a much larger image of a sabertooth, chasing a child through a horrific dreamscape of melting trees.

  What is the meaning of this? Tull wondered. He suddenly had a feeling that the artist was trying to convey something, but for the moment, the meaning eluded.

  And so it began. Tull ran behind Phylomon and Ayuvah, and at each turn of the stairs he was aware of the continual play of sun and shadow to form new images. Always the images grew, so that he learned to look beyond the borders of the old picture to discern a larger portrait. Some images were superimposed one upon another—a man selling a woman in a Craal slave market was suddenly revealed to be a man making the figure-eight upon her hand as a sign of marriage.

  Is my wife a slave to me? Tull wondered. If it was slavery, it was joyous slavery, for Tull saw that both the man and woman smiled.

  Perhaps the images are only meant to make me think, he wondered.

  A line of stones with odd indentations to cast shadows upon their tops could be seen to be joyful children, or if you lined them together two at a time they could also be seen as two oxen pulling a cart, or viewed in a pair of threes they became warriors with whitened faces, or as a whole they could be seen as a beggar with an outstretched hand pleading for food upon an empty platter, and then suddenly the image opened up, and among the surrounding stones he saw children and parents and grandparents joined hand to hand in a circle.

  Will my children be my enemies, my servants? Will they be beggars I resent, or will they grow in my image, an unending circle?

  Still the shadows shortened and changed, giving birth to new depictions.

  And Tull saw that the shadow show was about relationships and perceptions. At any moment, the shadows became one thing for him, yet he wondered if Phylomon and Ayuvah might see completely different views. Perhaps because of the limits of his own mind and imagination, he could only discern certain patterns.