The Skrayling Tree toa-2

by Michael John Moorcock

  all began to take me over. I was losing control of my own will. It was not pleasant to feel that somewhere I had experienced all this before, yet I was also somewhat heartened by the thought. I hoped a higher purpose was being served by my discomfort.

  During my youthful training I had been absorbed into many such rituals. I, therefore, made no particular effort to hold on to individual identity but let myself be drawn into the dark security of the heat and the shadows, the chanting and the drumming. I say security because it is like a kind of death. All worldly and material cares begin to disappear. One is confronted with one's own cruelties and appetites, experienced as a victim might experience them. There is remorse and self-forgiveness, an incisive glance into the reality of one's own soul, as if we stand in judgment on ourselves. This creates a peculiar psychic spiral in which one is redeemed or reborn into a kind of purity of being, a state which enables one to be open to the visions or revelations which are almost always the result of such formalities.

  Apologizing to us that he no longer possessed the tribe's traditional redstone pipe bowl, Ipkaptam produced a large ceremonial pipe and lit it with a taper from the fire. He turned to the four points of the compass, beginning in the east, chanting something I could not understand, puffing the smoke as he did so. He held the pipe aloft. Again he chanted and puffed. Then he passed the pipe to Klosterheim, who knew what to do with it.

  Now Ipkaptam began to speak of the tribe's great past. In rolling tones he described the Great Spirit's creation of his people deep below the ground. The very first people had been made of stone, and they were slow and sleepy. They had in turn made men to run their errands for them, and then made giants to protect them against rebellion. The men ran away from the giants to another land, which was the land of the Pukawatchi.

  The smaller Pukawatchi were too weak to fight so many; thus they fled underground. The giants had not pursued the men. The tall men had not pursued the Pukawatchi, and soon they were at one with men and giants.

  All had been equal, and all had gifts the others could use.

  Warmed in the womb of Mother Earth herself, they had no need of fire. Food was plentiful. They were at peace. Every year the great Eternal Pipe, the redstone smoking bowl of the Pukawatchi, which they had won in war against the green people, was produced and presented to the Spirit. The pipe was smoked by every tribe and every people in creation. It was always full of the finest herbs and aromatic bark, and it never needed to be lit. Even the bear people and the badger people and the eagle people and all the other peoples of the plains and forests and mountains were invited to the great powwow, to confirm their bond. All lived in mutual harmony and respect. Only in the world of spirits was there conflict, and their wars did not touch on the lands of the Pukawatchi, nor of the tall men, nor of the giants.

  I realized I was no longer hearing Klosterheim's Greek but Ip-kaptam's own language in his own voice. Ipkaptam easily made the mental links necessary for me to understand their language. At last the words had found their way directly to my mind.

  With the words came pictures and narratives, crowding one upon the other. All were sufficiently familiar. I absorbed and understood them quickly. I was learning the whole history of a people, its rise and fall and rise again. I was hearing its own legends. Would I learn about a lost sword with a habit of escaping or killing those who possessed it?

  More water was poured on the stones. The pipe was passed again and again. As I learned to inhale its strange smoke, my sense of reality grew even dimmer.

  Ipkaptam's insectoid features seemed those of a great ant and his crown of feathers antennae. I refused to lose either my life or my sanity. I pretended his disguise was all that was visible to me. I remembered the teachings of a people I had lived among briefly, who spoke of a god they called the Original Insect. He was supposed to be the first created being. A locust. The story was told how the locust could not eat, so the spirits made it a forest where it might graze. But the locust was so hungry he ate the whole forest, and now he cannot do anything else. Unless stopped, he will attempt to eat the whole world and then eat himself.

  I found nothing sinister in the tale the shaman told of his people's history. Perhaps there was nothing sinister in the tale itself, only in the teller. What Two Tongues had learned might not have been from his fathers. Nonetheless, I listened.

  The steam and the smoke continued to make me very faint. My heart sank when the great red sandstone peace pipe was passed again. Once more it was offered to the spirits of the four winds. Klosterheim took a small, mean puff and passed it to me. I inhaled the fragrant barks and leaves and came suddenly alive. It was as if the smoke curled through every vein and bone in my body, inhabiting all of me and filling me with a sense of well-being, leaving none of the effects of my usual desperate drug-supported state. Those drugs fed off my spirit as I fed off their energy. These were natural plants, dried but not cured. I felt as if I inhaled all nature's benefits in one long pull on the pipe. I was hugely invigorated.

  Ipkaptam took back the pipe with reverence. Again he offered it to the sky, then to the earth, then to the four winds, and only then replaced it on the stone before him. His widening lizard eyes glowed huge in the firelight.

  "Many times," he said, "the spirits tried to involve us in their wars. We would fight neither for one side nor the other. These were not our wars. We did not even have the means to fight them. We did not have the will to kill our fellows." He seemed to grow in stature as he spoke with reminiscent pride. "Once all peoples, giants and men, came peacefully to trade with the Pukawatchi in their underground realm. We traded the metal we chipped from the rocks. With this metal the whole world tipped its arrows and lances and made fine ornaments." Iron was more highly prized than gold, said Ipkaptam, for with iron a man might win himself gold, but with gold he was always vulnerable to the man with iron. Metal was even more highly prized than agate and quartz for the edge it would take.

  Men were cunning, had fire, but they did not know where to look for the metals and stones. Their tools and ornaments, their weapons, were made of flint and bone, so they traded furs and

  cooked meat for the Pukawatchi iron. Giants had sorcerous powers and ancient wisdom, for they were the folk of the rock. They had the secret of fire, and they knew how to burn metal and twist it into shapes. All had to come to the Pukawatchi for their metal, and the most prized of all the metals was the sentient iron mined at the heart of the world.

  The Pukawatchi were small and clever. They could find the crevices where the metals and the precious stones lay and prize them out. They had the patience to mine them and the patience to work them. They made hammers and other tools strong enough to flatten the iron, the copper, the gold. Striking them over and over again, they made beautiful objects and impressive weapons.

  They lived in their great, dark realm for untold eons until massive upheavals occurred below the ground and all around them people went to war. The Pukawatchi were forced to the surface. Terrified of the sun, they became night dwellers, hiding from all other peoples and keeping their own council. Sometimes they were forced to steal food from villages they found. At other times the villages left food for them, and they in turn repaired pots and the like.

  So the Pukawatchi wandered until they came to a place far from the lands of other men. Here they built their first great city. Now they were no longer brothers with their fellows. Now all were at war. Yet the Pukawatchi brought their skills with them when they fled, and they still had knowledge of the earth and what was to be found there. After a while they built a great city deep into the rock face of the land they had reached. The city was fashioned like the dark tunnels and chambers they had known below the ground. Now it was above the ground, but inside it was as it had always been. And the people were safe and the people prospered, living in their cool, dark cities. At last, against all sane instinct, against the very will of the spirits, they began to work with fire.

  Soon the giants heard that the Pukawatchi
had survived and could be traded with. The Pukawatchi learned the secret of fire

  and began to deal again with everyone except the spirits, who remained mindlessly at war. The war spread to men. The Pukawatchi made weapons for all peoples and grew rich as a result. The men were exhausted by war. The Pukawatchi cities had prospered and proliferated until the whole of the south and west became their empire.

  The Pukawatchi grew rich with all things men valued. They had extended their rule further and further across the surface- the Realm of Light, as they called it. They conquered other tribes and made them subject to the Pukawatchi, and in the conquering they won great treasures, among them the famous Four Treasures of the Pukawatchi.

  Each treasure had been won by a different hero, then lost in a series of complicated epics, then won again. All these stories were told to us in such a way that we absorbed them as we sat smoking and sweating in the lodge, our ordinary human senses completely lost to us.

  The Four Treasures of the Pukawatchi were the Shield of Flight, the Lance of Invulnerability, the Perpetual Peace Pipe which never required filling, and the Flute of Reason, which, if the right three notes were played upon it, could restore a mortally wounded creature to life.

  These treasures they kept in their city, deep within the complex of caves, in chambers they had hewn and elaborately decorated from the living rock. Pukawatchi cities could be defended easily against attack by abandoning the lower levels and defending the upper. No other tribe had ever defeated the Pukawatchi, who had gloried in their treasures, celebrating them each year with the stories of how they came to be won by the heroes of the tribe in deeds of extraordinary warfare.

  Ipkaptam began to draw in the air. He painted pictures there for us to see. He showed us the perpetually filled redstone pipe, which had belonged to the green people who lived along the lakes in stilt huts and who refused to pay the Pukawatchi a tribute of fish. So the Pukawatchi hero Nagtani went against the green people and destroyed their villages and took their pipe as a trophy. The green people were driven from the land.

  Next the Kakatanawa, far in the north, asked the Pukawatchi to fashion a great lance of magical iron which the Kakatanawa had cut from the mother metal. This was the first great treasure of the Pukawatchi, for they had made it themselves. The Kakatanawa sent the magic metal to be made into a lance, but they refused to pay the higher price the Pukawatchi asked. The blade was more valuable, so the Pukawatchi kept it.

  He showed us a vision of the lance, its shaft carved and decorated, its black blade running with scarlet letters. I was shocked. It was my sword, but turned into a spear! Then he showed us the Flute of Reason, and it seemed to me that Klosterheim responded with surprised recognition. I, too, experienced a flash of memory. And then Two Tongues showed us the Shield of Flight, the shield which allowed its owner to travel through the air. It was identical to the one I carried. I knew that the stolen artifact was only a few hundred yards from us at most, in the safekeeping of Asolingas.

  Ipkaptam continued. "All these were our treasures and our history. Then White Crow came, and he was smiling. White Crow came, and he told us he was our friend. White Crow promised to teach us all his secrets and because he did not seem a Kakatanawa and therefore not our enemy, we accepted him. His medicine was brought to us, and he was our good luck. Because he was not of our people, he could not take a wife among us, but he had many friends in the great men of our tribe, and their daughters admired him. Our people welcomed him, for he said he came only to learn our wisdom. We understood that he followed his dream-journey, and we wished him well.

  "And White Crow went away. We said: It is true. White Crow desires nothing from us. He is a good man. He is a noble man. He is a man who follows his way. He runs his own path. And we said that some great man was lucky indeed to have such a son.

  "Then the next year and the year after that, White Crow returned. And still he was a model guest. He helped with the hunting, and he lived among us. What was difficult for us to do was easy for him. His strength and his height and his cleverness were such that we were glad of his company.

  "Then the fourth spring White Crow came again and was welcome among us and shared our food and lived in our city and told tales of all the places he had visited. But this time he asked to see our sacred treasures, the Black Lance of Manawata, the only spear which can kill spirits; the Shield of the Alkonka, the only defense against the spirits; the Cherooki Pipe, the great redstone pipe which brings peace wherever it is smoked, even with the spirits. And the Flute of Ayanawatta, which, if the right notes are blown on it, will confer on the owner the power to change his ordained spirit path, even from death to life. It will heal the sick and bring harmony where there is strife.

  "And White Crow tricked us and stole our treasures and took them away with him. An evil spirit seized him. He journeyed to the great wilderness, where there are no trees. There, at the foot of the mountains, White Crow called a great gathering of the Winds. He planned to make the Winds his friends. So he called to the South Wind. And the South Wind came. He called to the West Wind. And the West Wind came to his calling. And to each spirit of the wind he gave a gift to take back to their people. Even before we knew he had stolen them, he had given the Perpetual Pipe to the People of the South; the Shield of Flight he gave to the People of the West. He himself took the Flute of Reason to the People of the East. And each of them gave him a gift in return.

  "Now he has set violent events in motion. There are prophecies, omens, portents. It is the end or the beginning for the Pukawatchi. So much is confused. But there is hope that we can recover our treasures. To the Kakatanawa themselves in the north, White Crow planned to carry the Black Lance. They are his most powerful friends, and his folk have always been allies of their folk, since the beginning of things. His people also made their great obscene pact with the Phoorn and so began the rule of ten thousand years. But if White Crow fails to take the Black Lance back to the Kakatanawa, then all our destinies can be changed. Thus we do everything we can to stop him and his allies. Already they stand on the final part of the path to the city of the Kakatanawa ..."

  "Where," Klosterheim told us, in more normal tones, "our magic defeats them. White Crow is prisoner, but his brother and sister carry the lance. We must stop them! They are held captive on the Shining Path by a great ally of mine, who makes it impossible for them to continue on the last part of the Shining Path. Time does not pass there. They are unaware of it, but they have remained under that spell for half a century, allowing us to grow strong again. They have tried all their sorcery against my ally, but he is too powerful for them. Only White Crow escaped, but I was too clever for him. Yet even my pact with Lord Shoashooan is finite, and that busy elemental will soon grow hungry. He must have his promised reward. So we must reach Kakatanawa as soon as possible. Alone we might not defeat White Crow and his talented friends, but together we will make their end inevitable."

  "What of your other lost treasures?" I said. "How will you get those back?"

  "It will be easier once we have the Black Lance," said Klosterheim. He added softly to me in Greek, "The treasures of the Pukawatchi are as nothing to the prize to be found in the city of the Kakatanawa."

  "I am only interested in one damned treasure," said Gunnar, to Ipkaptam's disapproval. "And that's a jeweled cup I've been seeking for some centuries. Failing that, I have some business with Death."

  I had sudden insight. "You call it the Holy Grail! The Templars were obsessed with it. Supposed to contain some god's blood or head? The Welsh also have a magic bowl. My erstwhile comrade Ap Kwelch told me he once discovered it. There are too many of these magic objects loose in a world so ambivalent towards sorcery! Your learned priests say it's a myth, a will-o'-the-

  wisp;

  "I know that it is not, sir," said Klosterheim disapprovingly.

  "There are many legends but only one Grail. And that is what I expect to find in Kakatanawa."

  Again the shaman was singing. He sang
to apologize for our behavior to whatever spirits he had summoned. As we became quiet he spoke of his own destiny, the dream he had dreamed in his youth: to revenge his grandfather, who had died in the summoning of Lord Shoashooan. In that dream he had sought his people's treasures and he had led his people home.

  "That is my destiny," he said. "To redeem my father's house. To reclaim our treasures and our honor. For too long we have followed a false dream."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Trail or Honor

  I am the God Thor,

  I am the War God,

  I am the Thunderer!

  Here in my Northland,

  My fastness and fortress,

  Reign I forever!

  Here amid icebergs Rule I the nations. This is my hammer, Mjolner the mighty. Giants and sorcerers Cannot withstand it!

  LONGFELLOW,

  "The Saga of King Olaf"

  Behold, this pipe. Verily a man!

  Within it I have placed my being.

  Place within it your own being, also,

  Then free shall you be from all that brings death.

  OSAGE PIPE CHANT (LA FLESCHE'S TR.)

  Gunnar the Doomed was in good spirits as we stumbled from the heat of the lodge out into the cold slap of a northern autumn evening. "By Odin," he said, "we are lucky men this day!" But I hardly heard him. I was still stupefied by the smoke and the heat of the lodge. I felt I was on the verge of understanding some great truth.

  I looked up and almost reeled at the sight which met us. It took me a moment to realize that the Pukawatchi were decorated for battle. They looked like a hive of human-sized insects. They buzzed faintly. In all my travels I had never seen a people quite like this.

  A sudden wilder buzzing-an ululation went up from the gathered warriors. Layers of different-colored paint in this light gave their faces the same quality I had noticed in that of their sachem, Ipkaptam the Two Tongues, as we sat in the lodge. Their eerie, insectlike quality was given further substance by a translucent black sheen which spread over the surface of the other colors. They had the dark iridescence of a beetle's wing. Some wore insectlike headdresses. The black overlay was symbolic. It meant they were prepared to fight to the death. The red-rimmed eyes announced they would show no mercy. Ipkaptam told me with some pride that they had named their path the Trail of Honor and would return with the nation's treasures or die nobly in the attempt.