Planet Walkers

by A. V. Shackleton

  A gentle glow on the eastern horizon set the alps in stark relief. To the west, a gradual increase of light revealed banks of ice floes heaving and falling in sluggish waves.

  I know she’s still alive. He turned to Casco. I just know it. She is trapped and afraid and I can do nothing!

  Casco turned to view the dying landscape. What will you do?

  Keep searching. Huldar replied. Will you help?

  A pang of hurt stabbed from Casco’s mind. How can you even ask? You are the brother of my heart. Lind was Uri’madu, our family.

  I’m sorry. Huldar bowed his head. I just …

  Let it go! Casco cried. Joumelät Enna died because she let her guard down. We all knew there were predators about. It was not your fault! And it was not your relationship with Andel that killed Lind, so please, stop punishing yourself and tell Andel how sorry you are for excluding her.

  She doesn’t need to share my pain. I can’t inflict that on her. She has sorrow enough of her own.

  Rubbish!

  “Look!” he said. From his mind’s eye, he shared Andel’s sad gaze.

  “She’s pining for you!” Casco shook his head. “How can you be so brilliant and so thick at the same time?”

  “Ah,” Huldar said. “So that’s what you think of me?”

  “Huh!” Casco grumbled. “We didn’t have to come all the way to a frozen swamp for me to tell you what you already know.”

  For a while they stood in silence. Huldar sighed. Casco was probably right. He usually was.

  “Look!” Casco pointed at a shooting star.

  As the meteor blazed across the dawn Huldar knew it was time to return to camp. His team would expect him to tell them what to do. Some would be ready to return to their tasks, others maybe not. In the days before the navigator was due, there would still be time for many of their projects to be completed, although the weather was rapidly deteriorating. The Gok had been right about that at least.

  As for himself, Huldar decided he would go west again, toward the falling star, and see what he could find. Maybe Lind would be there. Her early life had been marred by sorrow; she had been orphaned as a child and raised by her grandparents, now both long gone … Would her death-cry have come to him?

  “Are we done here?” Casco asked.

  Huldar shivered. “Yes, we are.” He clapped Casco’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  THE LOST ONE

  In the never-ending silence, Lind rocked herself back and forth. After a while, she leaned forward and counted her toes again … still ten. Her boots were gone – who knew where? Where did things go when they were lost in Qalān? The voices had started, but she knew they were lying. No one was looking for her. Soon she would die and her toes would drop off …

  Lind? LIND?

  She looked up. Her boots were talking to her now? She must be mad.

  “Lind, darling?” a soft voice said. “Oh my baby, my blessing, I’ve missed you so much!”

  “Mother?” The word seemed obscenely loud and she cringed as Qalān reacted with a violent shaking.

  “Why did you leave me?” her mother said. “I cried for you.”

  Lind shook her head. “No! Mother! I didn’t leave you,” she whispered. “I would never leave you. The healer was there and she took me away, and I cried. I cried! It was me, not you.”

  A pale round shape stabilized into a ghostly face with fair hair and blue, Lethian eyes - so like Huldar’s. The generous lips parted in a smile.

  “Come to me, darling, my sweet little one,” the lips crooned. “Let me hold you. I can take you with me. We’ll be together at last and I’ll never leave you again.” Her hand gestured lovingly. “Come …”

  Slowly, Lind unlocked her grip on her knees. Her mother beckoned again. Fragrant pink hereny flowers fell like rain. She climbed to her feet. Could she walk? She had to try.

  Her mother frowned. “Where are your shoes?”

  Lind looked down. Her toes were gone. Where were her toes? “I don’t know, Mama,” she said. “I lost them.”

  “You lost your shoes?”

  The rain of flowers evaporated. Lind nodded, suddenly ashamed. Her shoes, her best pink shoes with the shiny blue buckles; how could she lose them?

  “I paid good coin for those!” Her mother’s face was red and angry.

  Lind stepped back. She stifled a sob. Mama didn’t like it when she cried.

  “They were your favorite color!” her mother shrieked. Blonde hair swirled as she turned and walked away.

  “No, Mama! No!”

  As her mother faded into the mist, Lind tried to run, to follow, but she could feel no surface beneath her feet, no traction.

  “I’ll find them, Mama.” She crawled about, frantically searching. “I’m sorry!” she screamed. “I’ll find them!”

  The whiteness bucked and jumbled, sensitive to her cries. Her mother was gone. Lind froze. The head-shaking movement would stop if she was still – still and quiet like a beybey hiding in the kahmayre.

  The nausea passed. She realized she was hugging her knees again, as if she had never released them, as if she had imagined it all, her mother, her shoes …

  Arba and Uba, she wept to her knees, you are all I have … but the knobbly bones didn’t answer. They never did.

  Cottony whiteness closed around her and for one lucid moment she knew she could no longer distinguish between wakefulness and sleep, and if she didn’t keep counting her toes she might not know if she had died. Would the whiteness go on and on even after her soul had discarded her body? Maybe the Breath was a myth and there was no El, and no Asheru to welcome her like the legends said she would. But then she remembered Huldar’s Mark, and her heart stopped racing.

  Who gave him the Mark if not El? she asked her knees. She leaned forward. Her toes were there again.

  One … two … three … four …

  STRANGE CREATURES

  Huldar rubbed his hands together for warmth. A well-used pot hung on a tripod above the campfire, but the water was slow to heat above flames with no natural fuel.

  Cobar emerged from their tent. “Fire not your strong point?” The Rukh squatted by the tripod and concentrated for a moment. “Ahh, that old song,” he chuckled. “This should fix it.”

  With a small whump the fire doubled in size, and Huldar smiled.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “Changed the song.”

  Cobar passed on an esoteric image of a fire-working charm: a Tsemkar/Shamkar hybrid. Huldar smiled his thanks, but he had little talent for mind-power and wouldn’t be able to replicate it.

  While the water bubbled, he reviewed his plans for the day.

  When Casco joined them, he looked up. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Give him something to eat, Cobar,” Casco said. “Might improve his mood.”

  Huldar returned his attention to the map. “If we go here, and then here,” he said, sharing images of locations. “I want to cover this feature, ‘the road’, before it’s covered in snow. It is a mystery, isn’t it? Seems to have come up from the straights, as if it crosses them, and if Lind was lost or dazed, she may have followed it.”

  “She might have …” Casco said.

  “Exactly. So, ready?”

  “As soon as I’ve eaten.”

  “Then eat fast.”

  As they reached the end of a branching chain of portals, Huldar hesitated before kneeling to negotiate a further step through Qalān. This would be his first engagement with the planetary network since Lind’s disappearance. No one lost in Qalān had been ever been found, but maybe, just maybe, there could be a first time. Maybe she would be there by chance or he would hear her echo in the web of songs.

  He could feel Casco’s eyes on him, but when the new portal was completed, he couldn’t meet his friend’s gaze. He climbed slowly to his feet.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Not even a whisper.”

  Casco nodded. He tipped his head toward the new portal. “Let’s g
o then.”

  Maybe next time, Huldar said.

  As they stepped through to the edge of the road, Huldar and Casco were astonished to see a herd of large, six-legged beasts moving slowly and deliberately along it. They stood in shocked silence as the creatures bugled softly to each other through drooping, flexible noses. Each was at least as tall at the shoulder as Huldar himself, some even taller. Their long, silky coats were in all shades of brown from pale cream through russet to the deep peaty brown of an estuarine creek. A tiara of spherical eyes encircled each head like a crystal crown.

  The largest member of the herd aimed its nose at them and started forward.

  Huldar and Casco sidled from the path, but the creature followed, nose outstretched. The herd quickly engulfed the portal site, and Huldar cursed that they had not escaped while they still could. Had this been Lind’s fate, to be eaten by one of these behemoths? Why had no one seen them before?

  Deadfall from frostbitten trees made a thick natural barricade on either side of the path. They ran close to the edge, hoping for a break in the debris. The creatures kept up without effort, making no attempt to overtake. When Huldar slowed, the herd slowed also.

  We should stop, he said. Keep absolutely still. If they come at us, I’ll try and defend us, but we may have to go bush. Pick a path. I’ll follow.

  Casco looked behind them. It’s impenetrable!

  Then we’ll crawl!

  He froze as the lead creature advanced. Although it seemed placid and showed no signs of fear, he remained on his guard. At two paces from contact it stopped and moved its head up and down as if to see him better. Its hair rippled and swayed, then it launched itself up onto its two hind legs and opened its four arms wide.

  Huldar looked up at a towering underbelly marked with intricate rust red patterns against darker brown skin.

  By the Breath! Casco murmured, too astounded to do anything but stare.

  From the corner of his eye, Huldar saw several more of the larger animals separate from the herd. As they neared him, they also reared up. Each had patterns to show, no two the same in color or design.

  Are these elders? he asked Casco. If so, this was the first species he’d seen to have clear age differences and possibly even hierarchy!

  The main herd shuffled restlessly and kept their distance. They were grouped according to the shade of their coats. One lifted its nose and bugled, a long, plaintive wail ending in the sound of a ‘t’. Within the herd other, smaller creatures faced each other and mimicked the behavior of the older ones.

  The elders lowered themselves back to the ground. They seemed gentle and emanated only curiosity, so when the first one extended its nose toward Huldar’s face he stood his ground, but silently rehearsed the most powerful stun-charm he knew … just in case.

  The tip of the nose touched his skin. Behind him, he could hear Casco’s tense breathing. Soft whiskers snuffled the Shamkar on his cheek. The creature inhaled as if his Soul Mark had its own distinct scent.

  After several minutes, it seemed to lose interest, but when it moved on, another shuffled forward to take its place. Eventually all the elders had examined him in turn. Some also displayed for Casco and took time to examine his scent, while others merely gave him a cursory head-bob and wandered back to the mob.

  Their curiosity satisfied, the herd moved on, wailing to each other with long, mournful cries. “Way-e-n-n-tuh!” Huldar repeated the sound softly to himself.

  Soon, the hairy backs had blended into the landscape and the huge animals were almost invisible. Despite their great size, their soft feet left no signs of passage, no blade of grass bruised or twig snapped, but as they moved on Huldar was sure he sensed changes in the song of the planet – random elements melded into more cohesive patterns.

  Like spirit creatures, he said at last. He knew they were vital to the planet – his finely honed gift of ecological empathy told him so – yet he knew nothing else about them, neither where they had come from nor where they were going. How could such beasts have remained undetected? Their behavior fascinated him. Their markings seemed to have great significance, and by the segregation of coat color, he could see evidence of clan structure within the group, but there was so little time left for study.

  “Where does the trail go from here?” Casco asked.

  “I think it passes right through where Andel and her team are working,” Huldar replied. “At this rate, they’ll cross her path in ten days or so.”

  He walked to the center of the clearing and looked southward. After a moment, a broad grin split his face and he turned to Casco. “Don’t breathe a word of this. I want to see her face!”

  Casco laughed. Cruel!

  Huldar tipped his head toward the portal. “I can’t think any more. We’ll come back later.”

  “At least we can tell Cobar, can’t we?”

  Huldar nodded, and with a last look at the empty trail, the two meandered toward the faint aura of their gate. Their thoughts were full of their amazing encounter. Shared images and conjecture filled their heads, but when they reached the portal, Huldar stopped. There was something on the ground that hadn’t been there before. He turned toward Casco, not quite believing, but when he looked again it was still there.

  It’s a boot.

  They stared at the red leather, creased and worn – rune of Leth embossed on the outer ankle – dark blue clips, one broken.

  “Been reminding her for months to fix that,” Casco murmured.

  Huldar caught a glimpse of more red leather caught on a fallen branch.

  The other one? LIND! he cried. He gathered the boots to his chest and cast about with all the strength his mind could muster. LIND!

  They waited in silence, hoping beyond hope for an answer, but eventually he turned to Casco. “Not a trace. How can this be?” he whispered. Tears stung his eyes. “Is it some sort of terrible joke?” But as his fingers played over the well-worn leather he noticed it was utterly dry and not even cold. Had the boots come from Qalān, from the portal he had just made? He looked into the leaden sky, chill dampness all around … there was no other explanation.

  They scanned again, pushing their minds to the limit, but found no further sign. Huldar screamed in frustration. Reluctantly, they returned to Cobar, and Huldar summoned the Uri’madu to come home.

  Back at base-camp, he placed Lind’s boots on the kitchen bench and waited while the others arrived. When Duvät Gok came in, Huldar saw his eyes flash wide, then narrow suspiciously.

  “What’s this about?” Duvät demanded.

  “I’ll explain when the others get here,” said Huldar.

  The Overlord approached the table with caution. “Where did you get them?”

  “Huldar will explain.” Casco said.

  While the rest of the team gathered in the marquee, Huldar sat quietly.

  Sari pushed aside the door-flap and stared for a moment before running forward. She reached out to touch the broken clip. “They’re hers!” she sobbed. “They’re Lind’s. Where is she?”

  Casco took her in his arms and let her weep against his chest.

  “Huldar? What’s happened here?” Gento demanded.

  Andel picked up a boot and held it gently in her hands. She closed her eyes as if sensing Lind’s presence in the leather.

  “Impossible! They are not hers.” Duvät Gok yelled. He pointed at Huldar, his finger shaking with rage. “This is in poor taste, Huldar of Leth. Just when we are beginning to recover from tragedy, you see fit to reopen our wounds.”

  “No,” Andel said. “They are hers.” Tears started to roll down her cheeks. “If you touched them, you would feel her essence – and her trauma. The last time she was in contact with this leather she was crying and in pain.”

  She held the boot out. Duvät Gok flinched as if it were poisoned.

  “Return to work, all of you!” he shouted, then without a backward glance he turned and hurried away.

  Huldar stared after him. The Gok knows more than
he’s saying. I know it!

  Casco shook his head. And what if he does? You have no proof. Nothing. No shred of evidence.

  He hit her!

  Unless you actually interrogate him, you can’t be sure, Casco said. They locked eyes. Have you ever done that? Delved into the mind of another against their will?

  Huldar looked away. No. You know I can’t. The very idea repulses me.

  Then let it go. Sometimes the truth needs time to reveal itself.

  That night, Huldar could not sleep. The cold seeped into his bones despite his warm bedding, and the frigid silence unnerved him. Eventually he pulled on his clothes and went to the marquee.

  Lind’s boots stood on the bench as if waiting to be claimed. If they had something to say, he wished he could hear it, but then he recalled Andel’s words about Lind’s anguish and turned away. Suddenly, the deep stillness of the night seemed preferable to the boots’ accusations. He left the tent and wandered toward the bluff.

  On the plains below, snow glinted blue in the light of the moons – apart from an occasional flash of fiery red as the volcano vented. The eruption that had marked their arrival was slowly losing power. Burning rivers of lava had dulled, and discharge from the crater was now no more than an artist’s red spatter – but the sight drew him like a magnet. What secrets could it share? Did it somehow know the truth?

  The air moved slightly, so cold it seemed to have substance. He pulled his jacket tighter and hugged his arms around his chest. The mountain belched again. Thoughts of Lind’s torment would not leave him, nor would images of the Overlord’s sly smile. What did the Gok have to do with it? What was he failing to see?