Blade Kin

by David Farland

  “Ayaah,” Tull said, “the Pwi will march when you’re ready. I’ve had the boys practicing with swords for the past few days. But what news have you? Were you able to save the tiny humans?”

  Phylomon leaned back in his chair. “Gray birds attacked us twice in as many weeks. They watched us from a safe height and followed until we got to a valley of fog and escaped in the night.

  We managed to get ninety small humans to an Okanjara village. I paid the Okanjara well to care for our charges.” Phylomon leaned forward, folded his hands. “You saw the lamprey that the Creators sent for me. Did it look exactly like the others?”

  “Yes,” Tull answered, “except that it was much larger, and it had a blue symbiote, like the one you wear.”

  “That concerns me,” Phylomon admitted. “Are you absolutely certain that the lamprey is dead?”

  Fava said, “The Pwi were afraid, so they burned the body down to ashes.”

  “And Chaa skinned it,” Tull said.

  Phylomon looked up, suddenly cautious. “He took the symbiote? Where is the hide now?”

  “He is tanning it, in the shed behind his house,” Fava answered.

  The Starfarer glanced quickly around the room, stood. “I must go study it.” For the first time, Phylomon thought, I am sure. Chaa is playing with me, like a cat with a mouse.

  Phylomon realized he must have betrayed his nervousness, for Tull apologized, “He meant no harm. He only took it as a hunting trophy.”

  “You are far too naive a pup to understand what he is doing,” Phylomon countered, and he excused himself from the table, walked out the front door of the inn into the afternoon air. A crisp wind had blown in, carrying the smell of salt spray, and Phylomon hurried down the street, walking loose in the joints. After a week in the boat, he hadn’t got his land legs back.

  Tull, Fava, and the dark-eyed girl followed.

  They rushed downhill through the human part of town with its buildings of leaning gray stone. As they passed the smoking ruins of the mayor’s house, Phylomon said, “This artist you rescued, I trust he is still doing well after the attack?”

  “Ayaah,” Tull said. “He’s recovering a bit.”

  Phylomon crossed the redwood bridge, hurried past the log hogans of the Pwi with their sod roofs. When he got to Chaa’s house, he walked around the outside to the back, found the worm skin stretched round like a beaver’s pelt. The skin was light blue, the symbiote still alive and healthy. Phylomon touched the thing, could almost feel its desire as it sought another host.

  “You see,” Fava said. “It’s here, as I said.”

  Leaning close, Phylomon tried to study the knife cuts. He took one knife from his leg sheath, pried off the nails that held the hide to the board, and matched the left and right halves of the symbiote. They fit perfectly—knife stroke for knife stroke. Chaa had apparently not removed any of the skin.

  And yet, Phylomon reasoned, Chaa is a Spirit Walker with a great deal of knowledge. He could not be so stupid as to leave the symbiote here, waiting for a host, while near-immortality stood within his grasp.

  “What is Chaa up to? What is he thinking?” Phylomon whispered more to himself than to the others.

  “He’s been busy the past couple of days,” Tull offered. “Chaa has taken me as his pupil, training me to become a Spirit Walker.”

  Phylomon tensed and grabbed Tull’s arm, holding it, and he looked deeply at Tull. “What have you learned so far?”

  “Nothing,” Tull answered defensively. “I received my first lesson. He began … by trying to open my eyes.” Phylomon’s grip tightened, and Tull tried to pull away.

  “What are you afraid of?” Tull asked.

  Phylomon looked deep into Tull’s pale green-gold eyes, searching for … something. Tull seemed hurt, confused, and Phylomon realized that the boy deserved better treatment. They had traveled together for months during the summer, worked and sweated and despaired together as they first hunted for young serpents to bring back to Smilodon Bay, then hunted for serpent eggs as a last resort. If not for Tull, their quest would have failed. The boy deserved to be treated as a friend.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I … do not want you to train as a Spirit Walker,” Phylomon measured his words. “To do so, is to turn your back on other prospects. There is a college opening at South Bay where men are beginning to unravel the technology of my ancestors. In fifty years, radio waves will begin to reach us from Earth and we can rediscover how our ancestors entered the atomic age. You could help build the antennae to catch those radio signals. You could learn of their medicines, their machines, their spaceships. All the ancient knowledge of the Starfarers could be yours. You do not need to become a Spirit Walker.”

  “Fifty years?” Tull asked. “Perhaps it seems like nothing to you, but I’ll be an old man when those signals start to reach us. Besides, our ancestors sent radio signals for generations before they made any real discoveries.”

  “I know my path sounds difficult,” Phylomon offered. “You would need to be patient.”

  “And watch our people die? You have seen the Blade Kin on our border. Do you believe we have fifty years to wait or study?” Tull ripped free of Phylomon’s grasp and shouted desperately, “I need some way to fight them now! I need a weapon!”

  Phylomon looked deep into Tull’s eyes. His words were blasphemy. No Spirit Walker in his right mind would knowingly train a pupil who saw his power as a weapon.

  Suddenly Phylomon recalled a memory over three hundred years old. He had been on a battlefield, burned black with cinders, littered with twisted corpses, and on a hill he saw an oak, blackened like the bodies.

  Under the oak rested a dragon, a simple horned dragon like all the ones that the Starfarers had formed to protect Calla from the pteranodons and pterodactyls that would otherwise fly over from Hotland.

  But this dragon was blackened and its feathers singed, as if it too had been burned in the fire. As Phylomon walked to it, the dragon lifted its wing: cradled beneath the wing was a young boy, a Neanderthal with piercing blue eyes set deep beneath his brows, eyes aflame with rage, hair so blond it almost gleamed white: Terrazin Dragontamer.

  The memory came so clearly, so frighteningly, that Phylomon drew a breath. The final battle of the Talent War flashed before Phylomon’s eyes, the battlements of Bashevgo cracking from the blast, laser canons warping in on themselves while legions died, clawing their battle armor from their faces, clawing their own eyes from their sockets, clawing the air.

  Phylomon began to breathe heavily. The memory frightened him more than he could say for reasons he could not quite fathom.

  I taste your fear, his symbiote whispered.

  “Are you all right?” Tull asked, and Phylomon looked in Tull’s eyes; they were Terrazin’s—hinting at rage, despair and madness. He had more than “Revolution in his eyes.”

  The Starfarer closed his tired eyes, whispered to his symbiote, “I’ve executed many men for what they have done. In that I was just. But I’ve never executed a man for what he might do.”

  What he might do.

  Circles, Phylomon told himself, I’ve been walking in circles all these years. Here I am, at Smilodon Bay, and it is all starting again.

  Things Chaa had said after his last spirit walk suddenly made sense to Phylomon.

  After Chaa had looked into the future, trying to learn why the sea serpents had died, he spoke to Phylomon, saying, “Tull can end the war in two years. He alone can destroy the nations of Craal and Bashevgo, defeat the Slave Lords. You will die within two years.”

  If Tull were another Terrazin, of course he would defeat the Slave Lords. If Tull were another Terrazin, Phylomon would not escape him alive. What hope could Craal and Bashevgo have against such a monster? Their six million Blade Kin against a sorcerer like Tull—their resistance would matter less than that of grass against a scythe.

  I taste fear, the symbiote whispered, and Phylomon’s skin tightened involuntarily,
preparing for attack.

  Chaa, Phylomon told himself, you foolish young Spirit Walker, to harbor such hopes. I managed to kill Terrazin once, but at great price! At great price!

  As if doors had opened in Phylomon’s mind, he saw the truth: Do you think to train Tull, to keep your monster on a leash, and then kill him once he has won your war for you? Do you think to sacrifice him as you did your own sons?

  Phylomon picked up the pale-blue symbiote, carried it across the street, and hurled it into the bay.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Phylomon hunted for Chaa, but the Spirit Walker eluded him till dusk, when he spotted Chaa down at the redwood bridge, fishing pole in hand, like some human.

  He had a wooden bait pail at his side. The Spirit Walker looked up as Phylomon approached, smiled.

  “So, you have had a good day?” Chaa asked. Chaa didn’t have his line in the water. Instead, the bait—a ball of chicken guts—rested inches from the surface.

  “I’ve been searching for you,” Phylomon said.

  “I know,” Chaa answered. He squinted off toward Tull’s cabin. “You know, I think Tull and Fava will make a good pair. Everyone in town has given them wedding gifts. What will you offer them? Gold? A jewel? An old man’s loyalty?”

  “I know what you are thinking,” Phylomon said. “Your plan is dangerous.”

  Chaa nodded thoughtfully. Waves rolled beneath them, and suddenly Chaa dropped the line, let it sink. Almost as soon as his line touched the water, a huge fish lunged upward, grabbed the bait. Chaa fought it for a moment, then swung it up onto the bridge. It looked like a ling cod, with sharp teeth, but it had a blue skin like Phylomon’s.

  Phylomon realized that Chaa had been waiting to catch just that fish, the one that the symbiote had clung to. The Spirit Walker was showing off his power.

  Chaa peered up at the blue man. “You think evil of me, but I know what I’m doing,” Chaa said, and he wrapped the fish in a blanket.

  Phylomon stood, dazed by the Spirit Walker’s nerve. “Throw it back!” he warned. He looked in Chaa’s eyes.

  Chaa asked evenly, “Do you think I am a stupid man? A wicked man?”

  Phylomon moved forward, thinking to harm the Spirit Walker, and Chaa grabbed the bait pail, splashed the contents over Phylomon, and the blue man’s skin burned where it splashed—puckering and steaming.

  Ammonia, Phylomon realized too late. His symbiote convulsed, throwing him to the ground, and in his mind Phylomon could hear the symbiote, shrieking in pain. Acid could not mar the thing, fire could not burn it. But pure ammonia shredded the Starfarer’s symbiote like paper.

  Chaa stepped up, put a foot on Phylomon’s chest, and held the bucket over him, threateningly.

  Phylomon could only lay panting, his symbiote shocked into unconsciousness, every nerve burning in pain. He looked around, embarrassed to have been taken down so easily, afraid that other townsmen might see, learn his secret weakness.

  “I am neither stupid nor wicked,” Chaa said. “I’ve Spirit Walked the lives of ten thousand men, and though my body is young, I have lived far longer than you. I know how you Starfarers removed your symbiotes. And if I were a wicked man, I would kill you now and take your skin! But I do not need your skin. For the first time in three hundred years, a living symbiote has fallen into our hands. Do you think you are the only one on this world who desires or deserves immortality?”

  “No,” Phylomon admitted.

  Chaa stepped back. “I am a man of peace, but I know what you are thinking. For a thousand years you have fought the Slave Lords and failed. You fear to leave a symbiote where your enemies could get it. But now, it’s my turn to fight, and Tull’s.

  “I warn you: Leave me and my family alone!”

  ***

  Chapter 14: Broken Futures

  Over the next four days the people of Smilodon Bay settled into a routine. Tull spent the mornings and afternoons in a field outside town with Fava, Phylomon, and the Pwi. They sparred with swords, longspears, shields, and the Neanderthals’ kutow—a double-headed ax as heavy as a mace.

  The practice field became crowded as Pwi and an occasional human poured in from nearby towns and back country. Often more than six hundred would practice at once, young men and women like Tull and Fava, children from the age of twelve on up, old men who should have fought their last battle ages ago.

  Fava exulted at the sight. “Have you ever seen so many people!” she cried over the thump of maces on shields, the clack of wooden practice swords, the laughs and yelps of pain. “Surely we are a great army! The Lords of Bashevgo will never expect our attack!”

  Tull did not have the heart to tell her that in Craal he had watched an army pass him on a mountain road taking over six hours just to move the ten thousand warriors with their armored mammoths. “Yes we are growing strong,” he agreed.

  In the Rough guns had long been rare, the supply of gunpowder unpredictable. Human Slave Lords who depended on armies of Neanderthals to protect them controlled the dispersal of personal armaments in order to keep them from the wrong hands.

  Even in the Rough men who sold guns and ammunition had a curious way of dying young—blown apart with their own gunpowder. The Pwi feared such weapons.

  But Phylomon taught them the ancient arts, and in the back of the blacksmith shop they learned to combine sulfur with potassium nitrate and crushed charcoal from the ashes of the forge to form a weak gunpowder. They smelted brass and copper for bullet casings, tin for bullets and with six men working at the forge at six shifts per day, they were able to make crude long-barreled guns like those that the Blade Kin of Craal had begun to use, yet their output was less than two weapons a day.

  During the nights Tull and the others kept a tight watch over the town, still hunting the mayor. For nearly a week there had been no sign of him, and Tull was becoming more and more convinced that Garamon had escaped their net.

  But on the morning of the fifth day after Phylomon had returned, Tull was still keeping watch on the north end of town, at a communal fountain where the human women washed their clothing.

  Darrissea Frolic came that morning, wearing her long black cape. Her face was flushed and sweaty from practicing on the training field with the Pwi.

  The gangling human girl was outclassed by the Pwi with the sword, yet she had been working hard during the week. She broke the thin crust of morning ice from the washing rocks, went to work scrubbing a heavy wool tunic. As she washed the clothes, Darrissea talked endlessly about weapons and sword strokes and parries until Tull wearied of her chatter; then she turned to him and changed subjects. “You know Phylomon better than anyone. Do you think he likes me?”

  An intensity hung in the girl’s voice, and Tull felt unsure how to answer. “I don’t know. Have you ever even spoken to him so that you can ask him?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Darrissea admitted. “But every time I try, I feel stupid. I want to know how he feels about women.”

  “He has married once or twice,” Tull said, “Hundreds of years ago. The kwea of those marriages weighs on him. He loved his wives very much. But he is so old now, so different from us, I do not think he will ever marry again.”

  “Oh,” Darrissea said, and she looked dreamily into the sky.

  Tull laughed. “Do you like him?”

  Darrissea scowled. “Go ahead and laugh. He’s a good man. The first good man I’ve seen around here in a long time. I’m going to marry him someday.”

  Tull laughed harder, and Darrissea pulled her tunic from the water and whipped it at him. Suddenly there was a shout from behind the houses west of town, and they both looked up. On the hill a Pwi boy was pointing into town. “Garamon! Garamon—behind the cloth shop!”

  Everywhere Pwi took up the shout and ran for the jumbled buildings behind the cloth shop.

  Tull stood firm, knowing that with so many guards deserting their posts, the mayor might try to slip through the net. For the rest of the morning the Pwi rushed through the busin
ess district, but found no sign of the mayor, though the boy swore vehemently that he had seen the mayor stealing clothes from a clothesline.

  When another Pwi came to stand guard, and Tull felt secure that the town was under tight watch, Tull decided to take up his own hunt.

  The mayor had owned the cloth shop, but as a criminal his goods had been confiscated, distributed around town. Tull went to the empty shop, which still had bolts of cheap fabric strewn on the floor.

  The day was overcast with feathery clouds, and thin sunlight fell cold on the floor. In the silent room, Tull stood, stretched out with his mind. What had Chaa said? “You can feel your enemies, even in the dark or behind stone walls.”

  The walls were stone, the room barren, yet Tull could feel Garamon nearby. He recalled the stone walls in Garamon’s home—a hidden passage behind a cupboard, and Tull went to work pulling shelves from the walls. He felt like a dog yapping at mice in a woodpile, frenzied, panting with excitement. He could taste the scent. Garamon was near, the murderous bastard, and Tull could feel him.

  Tull pulled the fixtures from the walls, but found no passage. When he was done, he stood, panting, exhausted. He looked up into the rafters of the building. The strong beams crisscrossing under the roof. They offered no place to hide. He looked at the planks of the floor, began pulling them up at random.

  By afternoon Tull had exhausted himself, and the sensation that Garamon was near had vanished. Either Garamon had left or Tull had become so numbed to the sensation that it no longer mattered. It might have only been wishful thinking.

  Garamon has come out today, Tull thought. Perhaps he has run out of food or water. He will come out again.

  Tull gave up the search. Walking home, he tried to think of some other place the mayor could hide. The rafters? Could there be a false ceiling above them?

  He planned to check in the morning. Tull had left a cloak at Chaa’s house the day before so he stopped to get it. Zhopila and Chaa were gone, along with the children. Probably visiting old Vi or some other friend. Tull went inside found the cloak in Chaa’s Spirit Room.