The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers)

by Frank P. Ryan

  Turkeya followed the shaman into the cabin. The old man was tall enough to have to bend his head in order to fit under the ceiling and his good eye glanced around at all four friends, as if checking their choices of coats. In particular he looked Alan up and down, pleased that Alan had copied the fisher people in belting his coat with a strip of leather. Turkeya made a comment that brought a hint of a smile to the shaman’s wrinkled face, and the shaman spoke in that same guttural voice to his assistant, who disappeared again, returning with his arms full of fur-lined boots. The largest of these—Alan suspected they were the property of the youth himself—fitted him for calf length, though they were a little too big for his feet.

  Judging that they were now sufficiently protected against the weather, Turkeya led them out through the leather doorway onto the deck and down some planks onto the ice-field. The sky was the mauve of a healing bruise and the temperature well below freezing. They appreciated the fur clothing in a wind that was so cold that none of them could open their eyes wider than slits. Virgin snow squealed underfoot as they tried out their new boots.

  As Turkeya showed them around, Alan saw that the village was made up of about a hundred sturdy boats, each boat was about thirty feet long with a single mast for an oblong leather sail and very likely housed a family. The living quarters were struck from the same rough-hewn cedar as the keels, although many of them were painted with bright colors, such as reds, yellows and greens. The entire fleet was becalmed in a frozen lake that, in less wintry times, must feed into a river. At the heart of the village was the galleon Alan had seen on their arrival. The great ship, triple-masted and built of oak, was more impressive when viewed close-up. Although his head throbbed with cold, Alan couldn’t help but whistle with admiration as his eyes roamed the majestic structure of the galleon that towered over the simple fishing boats like a medieval cathedral amid the ramshackle streets of its builders.

  Mage Lord

  Alan’s queasiness returned and forced him to head back to the shaman’s boat, leaving the others to explore the village. With a splitting headache, and feeling lonely and confused, he was unable to come to terms with what was happening to him in this bizarre world. He missed his grandfather, Padraig, and he wondered what had become of him now that Grimstone was back in Clonmel and looking for Mark and Mo. The fact was that he missed it all—the sawmill, the freedom to go rambling in the woods or go fishing in the river—a lot more than he would ever have imagined he would. Only now, with all this distance between them, did he fully appreciate how caring Padraig had been.

  I’m really sorry, Grandad! I took it out on you, and now I wish I hadn’t.

  That something really was happening within himself, he could no longer doubt. Waves of altered sensations flooded him, as if the ruby in his brow was somehow invading him, interfering with his body and mind. And now, feeling overwhelmingly nauseous, the last thing he wanted was confrontation or aggravation, so it was with trepidation that he found the shaman waiting on the deck of his boat, seemingly for Alan’s return. He tried to shuffle past him, but the old man gripped his shoulders and stared at him with the same passion as earlier. The same depth of emotion contorted his face, and he spoke to Alan in that same tense, guttural tone of voice. But Alan could no more understand him now than before.

  “Chahko kloshe!”

  The shaman opened his black-palmed hands, indicating Alan’s brow, as if an admonition that Alan should understand.

  “Kah mika chahko?” He swung his long bewhiskered head from side to side, groaning aloud. “Hyas Dia-ub!” All of a sudden his expression became so urgent, so full of animation, it only worsened Alan’s headache.

  The shaman pointed to Alan’s brow, then made a kind of fluting sign with his fingers over his lips. As Alan tentatively reached up to touch his birthmark, he felt how hot it was to the touch.

  Aw, Jeez—I’m burning up—my whole body is burning up with some kind of a fever!

  For several seconds he felt a jitteriness invade his limbs, so debilitating it forced him to sit down on the bunk where he had spent the night. Suddenly, the crystal in his brow throbbed and he felt a tremendous shockwave course through him, as if the thing had connected with his heartbeat and the combined pulse of energy went out to every nerve in his body. He hands fell onto his lap and he just stared down in bewilderment at his trembling fingers.

  The shaman put his arm around Alan’s shoulder and helped him back onto his feet, leading him to the basin he had earlier washed in. The old man pointed to the water in the basin, in which Alan saw his reflection. He lifted the lock of hair that had fallen down from his forehead and saw that his birthmark was no longer an inverted triangle of faintly pink skin, but a bright ruby triangle, each of its sides sharply demarcated and about an inch in length, the whole thing glowing eerily in the gloom of the interior. Very carefully, he brushed his finger over it. It felt as flat and smooth as the ruby crystal the old woman had taken from the sulphurous lava.

  Suddenly, he jerked his whole body back in alarm.

  No—it can’t be!

  He bent down and peered again. But his initial impression was not mistaken. In the depths of the ruby crystal he saw movement. Flickering patterns were coming alive within it, strange flows of light and arabesques of color glowed deep in the matrix of the crystal, changing, metamorphosing, from moment to moment. The patterns were pulsating in time with his heartbeat. A wave of gooseflesh swept over him. He tottered back. He had to be assisted to sit down on one of the bunks where he put his face in his hands.

  Oh, heck—what’s happening to me?

  The shaman left him for several minutes, then returned with what appeared to be a thin flake of blue crystal, perhaps three inches wide and an irregular oval in shape. The old man held the crystal in the palm of his left hand, then extended his right hand over it with the fingers splayed. His face tensed in concentration. Alan watched as five claws extended from the black pads of old man’s fingers. With a throaty incantation the shaman picked up the blue crystal by its edges, using only the tips of the claws. It was as if he had to avoid any flesh contact with the blue crystal. Then he held it about an inch away from Alan’s throbbing brow. Alan felt the shock of communication, then a strange intoxicating feeling, as if all his tensions and fears were draining away from him. The shaman rocked his upper body slightly from side to side, incanting words that sounded like a prayer, still holding the blue crystal close to Alan’s brow. Suddenly, unbelievably, Alan realized that he was hearing the old man’s thoughts aloud.

  The shaman was telling him his name: Kemtuk Lapeep.

  Without having to think about it, Alan knew what it meant. In the language of the fisher people it meant “Kemtuk the lame.”

  Alan was bewildered by the strangeness of it; he hadn’t a clue how this was happening, or what it meant.

  Kemtuk Lapeep drew back his hand, holding the blue crystal. He gestured, a half-shrug of the shoulders, as if to suggest that crystal-to-crystal contact was no longer necessary.

  Alan thought about what the shaman was trying to tell him, that maybe his own ruby crystal was making this communication possible, and he wondered if he was being invited to figure out a way of testing it out for himself. What was there to lose? He shrugged, brought to mind some simple words of greeting in English. He heard himself murmur, “Nah sikhs, Kemtuk Lapeep!”

  Greetings to you, Kemtuk the Lame!

  Somehow, marvelously, he had actually spoken in the alien language of the fisher folk, by thinking of the English words in his own mind. Meanwhile he couldn’t help but notice the mixture of relief and delight that came over the old man’s face.

  It took several more hours of trial and experiment before they were able to communicate meaningfully in this bizarre manner. Meanwhile Alan learned some useful facts about Kemtuk and the fisher people. The old man was a great deal more than just a medicine man to his village. He was the “lore master”—a term that meant something like spiritual leader—of a people
widely scattered about the entire northeastern shoreline of a great continent known as Monisle. There was a hint or two, cautiously touched upon, that the shaman had other knowledge, secret lore that was passed down from such a spiritual leader to a chosen apprentice. Turkeya was his apprentice. Turkeya was also the son of the tribal chief, Siam, the barrel-chested giant Alan had encountered on his arrival. When Kemtuk, with a laugh, first spoke Siam’s name, Alan saw the image of a roaring grizzly bear. Alan also learned that the chief was married to a noblewoman called Kehloke, and that Turkeya had a younger sister who was called Loloba.

  “We look very different, your people and mine.” Alan shook his head, still aching and dizzy, but also hesitant to say the obvious for fear of offending the old man.

  They were standing together on the deck of the shaman’s boat, looking down at the fleet of other boats and Kemtuk’s people. At Alan’s comment, the old man grunted, lifting his gaze beyond the ice-bound lake to the snow-covered peaks that encircled it. In the shaman’s mind Alan heard him think of the Whitestar Mountains, giving rise to the headwaters of the Snowmelt River. In the old man’s mind Alan sensed awe, in relation to both mountains and river—awe and perhaps a religious sense of reverence such that Kemtuk’s functioning eye refused to meet Alan’s eyes directly. “Yes, we are different. We are Tilikum Olhyiu, the Children of the Sea. You, if you will take no offense, are naked-skins, children of monkeys who burn good flesh with fire until it is unfit even for the vultures.”

  Alan shook his head. He wasn’t offended. But the communication appeared to be helping him in some way. He was feeling less jittery, less nauseous, and was suddenly intrigued with a startling idea. “In this world, this land, there are different kinds of people?”

  At this Kemtuk roared with laughter, showing a mouth that was missing a few teeth, and all those remaining were much larger than Alan’s own. “Of course there are many different peoples. In the great cities, such as Isscan, by the confluence of the great rivers, and in Carfon, by the Eastern Ocean, you would find naked-skins like yourself.” Suddenly the shaman wheeled and the distant look was gone from his eye. “There will be time enough later for idle chatter. But today we have precious little time. You must tell me how is it that you, bearer of the soul eye, have come among us?”

  Assuming the shaman must be referring to the ruby triangle in his brow, he could only shrug his shoulders and drop his head. It was an effort to keep panic out of his voice. “I wish I could explain it to you. But how can I explain what I don’t even begin to understand myself?”

  “Yet, even if you do not understand the greater purpose, you might tell me in such simple terms as you remember.”

  Alan nodded. It sounded reasonable. And so he attempted to explain their being summoned here from another world, the circle of stones in the blizzard, how their lives were saved by the strange cave creature who resembled an old woman, and who called herself Granny Dew.

  On hearing the description of the old woman, the shaman’s gray eye grew round and he fell onto one knee before Alan, muttering incantations. “It is as I hardly dared to hope. Even when I first saw the soul eye in your brow, I could not credit what it truly meant.”

  Alan just stood there, bewildered.

  But Kemtuk persisted, his hands once again gripping Alan’s shoulders. “Even the simplest child among us would see in the mark that you are the one we have so long awaited—the heralded one who would come out of the snowy wilderness. And now I hear your story! Only a great Mage would carry such a mark of power.”

  Alan pulled himself free. “I’m not a Mage, whatever that might be. I’m just a kid—an orphan.”

  The shaman stood erect, his head towering above Alan’s. “If I judge correctly, you neither understand your purpose nor have you learned how to use your power. But in you I sense the seed of destiny. In time you will become a Lord among Mages, Alan Duval.”

  Alan shook his head. “Hey—there’s so much I don’t have a clue about. Maybe you can help me to understand all this—the real reason my friends and I were brought here, to this world.”

  “In time, perhaps, we may search for answers. But this is not the time for explanations. We must make haste. Ignorant though you seem of your purpose, I have to warn you that our situation here is desperate. Since the fall of Ossierel, we, the proud Olhyiu, have been in thrall to the accursed Storm Wolves. The Children of the Sea are forbidden to cast their nets in the Eastern Ocean. We must fish only in this accursed wasteland of ice and snow, and the cream of our harvest fattens the bellies of the traitors in Isscan. Shamans such as I are forbidden to practice our art, even to succor the sick.”

  “Then you’ve already broken these laws in helping us?”

  “Your arrival here is welcome but also extremely dangerous. There is one among us, a hunter called Snakoil Kawkaw—rightly named, for he is the deceiving crow. Our chief, Siam, will hear no ill of him because he is his maternal cousin. But Kawkaw will attempt to use you for his own purposes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Our chief, Siam, might insist that Kawkaw would not betray his own people to our enemies. But I fear that he will. And if such were to happen, the situation would become perilous.”

  Alan rubbed at his brow. What had the old woman really done to him with this strange ruby crystal that it should cause such a reaction? “I just can’t take this in. I don’t understand anything of what you’re saying.”

  “There will be time for talking later. For the moment we must make ready to flee.”

  “But how can we? Your boats are trapped in ice.”

  “Mage Lord—we must find a way.” Kemtuk dropped his face to look down into Alan’s with a desperate expression. “The Storm Wolves are no more than a day’s travel from this place. If they find you here, they will kill you. I must call together a council that will persuade my people to action.” So saying, the shaman hurried from the boat.

  Alan clenched his fists in frustration. He was still nauseous and bewildered at what was happening to him. He could feel his own pulse, quickened by anxiety, in the triangle in his brow. All the same, he knew he had to go find the others. Warn them about what was going on. But how —how the heck am I going to explain any of this to them?

  A Council of Life and Death

  Haltingly, at times with his hands running through his hair in frustration, Alan did his best to explain what he had learned from the shaman. The friends were standing out on deck, so scared that they were scarcely aware of the bitter wind that numbed every inch of their exposed skin.

  “Oh, Alan!” Kate put her arms around him, squeezing him tight.

  “Oh, Alan, my foot!” Mark was less comforting. “You Americans have just the term for it—bullshit!”

  “Mark,” said Kate, “I’m warning you!”

  “Hey, Kate, it’s okay. Mark’s right. I can see how that’s exactly how it must sound. All I can tell you guys is exactly what I saw and heard, just as it happened.”

  Even as Mark’s face creased with disbelief, a bell began to peal out over the ice-bound lake, and the boat people began to gather, putting down whatever they were doing and streaming towards the galleon. Kate clasped Alan’s hand. She didn’t need to tell him how frightened she was.

  Mo was equally shocked, and puzzled. “Thu-thu-this . . . ?” She pointed at the triangle in Alan’s brow.

  “‘The soul eye,’ the shaman called it.”

  Kate spoke for herself and Mo. “You really can understand what people are saying through it?”

  Alan shrugged. “I’m just doing my best to explain what I saw and heard. I’m not sure I believe it myself.” He hesitated, hardly daring to tell them what he now suspected. “I . . . well, I think that sometimes I can read some of what people are thinking—what’s in their minds.”

  The three others stared at him dumbstruck. Then Kate grew excited. “It must be terrifying.”

  “You’re right—it is.”

  “But if it’s true—I mean,
think about it! Do you think Granny Dew might have put some similar kind of magic into our crystals?”

  “Who knows? Maybe it’s possible.”

  Kate looked down at the egg-shaped crystal given to her by Granny Dew. She pored over its subtle shades of green, and the complex whorls and patterns within the green which were constantly metamorphosing, like the whirling of autumn leaves in the wind. Mo suddenly grew tearful and Kate understood, putting her arm around her shoulders. “We were all given crystals, except for Mo. Poor Mo—why was she left out?”

  Alan could only shrug. “I haven’t a clue. I guess, maybe, because she didn’t have a cell phone.”

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “I’m not sure fairness counts for much here.” But then he sighed and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Who knows, it might be more of a blessing to have no crystal!”

  But there was no time for further discussion. Several Olhyiu arrived to herd the four friends down onto the ice, leading them to where the great ship was becalmed. They escorted them up the gangway that led to the center deck of the galleon, which extended to at least a hundred and fifty feet in length and forty feet in breadth, with balustraded sides over all the different levels of the decks, and overhead a complicated maze of snow-grimed rigging. There were huge raised sections of deck at the fore and aft, with a stretch of mid-section in between. It was toward the rear raised section they were now being herded, passing under a massive carved arch, from the apex of which hung a brass bell that was still faintly vibrating from the summoning. Two heavy doors were thrown open onto a broad staircase and they descended under a circular carving of a whale leaping out of the ocean over two crossed harpoons; given what Kemtuk had told him, Alan assumed this symbolized the Children of the Sea and their former freedom to fish the oceans.

  But now that Alan was close enough to witness the complexity of the galleon’s art and engineering, he couldn’t help but wonder how these unsophisticated people could possibly have built it.