Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  It was weird to be headed into a city again, after so much time in the zones. I hoped we hadn’t grown arrogant from being final authorities for so long. In the city, we’d be the pros from Dover, but not the final word. We could expect the City Guard to treat us as respected colleagues, but generally they would keep themselves distant and not a little suspicious.

  A Railwalker does not seek to grandify the self. A Railwalker seeks only to get the job done. A Railwalker seeks Soul-Are.

  INTERLUDE: BRICKS AND CROWS

  Although many, if not most, biographies claim Brick never received much formal schooling, did not attend or graduate from any school or academy, and many passages in the Book of Brick and Arteology seem to be expressed in an academically naïve, if street-wise, voice, it should be noted that aside from the rendering of certain contemporary slang or street phrases, most of the grammar in these passages is essentially sound, and that in some places, simple words are misspelled, while more complex words are spelled accurately. This suggests a writer at least moderately well educated adopting an uneducated voice and tone. If we accept that the Red Raven himself penned the Book and Arteology, we must also accept that he was perhaps better educated than many sources have led us to believe—indeed, more than Brick himself wanted to appear. Some authorities, like Siblene James, argue for what is known as the “Amanuensis Theory,” which holds that some associate—perhaps even one of the First Five of Ravens—performed the actual writing, either recording Brick’s discourse from memory, or from dictation on which the Amanuensis consciously or unconsciously acted as a sort of copy editor.

  With regard to Brick’s parentage, we have three conflicting legends. The first is that he was the son of the beloved pre-Crash spiritual leader and popular singer Sariel Mamaji. Another tale relates that he was found floating in a basket in Manhattan’s East River. Yet a third casts him as the son of the Crow Goddess, Morgana.

  Since the “baby in a basket” story has no accompanying detail, the Mamaji story is the only one that can be examined for historical veracity. Unfortunately, while much of Mamaji’s life may be well documented, the period in question was one during which she traveled on the road, performing and preaching her way across the then-united country. She worked with a variety of small bands, and records of this period are severely fragmented (see Grafton’s Life with Mamaji or Altran’s SM: A Biography of Sariel Mamaji). There is no record of any child other than Christopher Johns, born during Mamaji’s Mexico tour, who grew up to take the reins of her Wheel of Life Church from Mamaji’s death until the time of the Crash. And Johns, however admirable a character in his own right, was clearly not Brick. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out the possibility of another child born during Mamaji’s early wild period.

  There are, of course, many “Brick tales,” stories of various episodes in Brick’s life, which may take place before, during, or after the Crash. In the years following Brick’s death (or disappearance; see below), the Brick tale entered the arena of popular culture, spawning many short stories, DVs, and comanga. The vast majority of these tales may be discarded as the compositions of imaginative authors, artists, and screenwriters. Within the Railwalker Order itself, orthodox dogma was clear on this point: these tales, even those of the Canonical Raven Texts, as well as the stories of Brick’s miraculous birth, were to be regarded as metaphor, and not literally true. The popularization of Soul-Are and the rise of the Soul-Areists have muddied the waters on this point considerably, since fundamentalist Soul-Areism tends to treat all of the Canonical Texts as received Truth, and literal history. But despite the order’s emphasis on the metaphorical nature of the tales, most authorities today acknowledge the stories written by the First Ravens to be largely legitimate (although some believe that even these tales had historical incidents as their starting point only, and were overlaid with motifs from earlier mythologies).

  As might be expected, the best documented years of Brick’s life are his last. Once the aftermath of the Great Crash was past, and the Order of the Railwalkers became something like an established institution, finding their niche in the newly evolving society of mid-period Merica, the gradual rebirth of record-keeping and media technology provided for materials that would allow scholars to build a larger and more detailed picture. (For an extended treatment of this period, see M.E. Grant’s Red Raven Twilight.)

  Yet, after a few brief years of reliable records, the very last years of Brick’s life are again poorly documented. After stepping down as Elder Raven, and seeing the installation of his foster-son Ryon in his place, Brick seems to have gone walkabout in the zones. What he did there in those last three years is a complete mystery. It is known that he surfaced at the Nestudio in New Frisco once during the second year, and again toward the end of the third year, when he informed Elder Raven Ryon that he would not be returning again. One month after Brick left for the zones that last time, Ryon called for the Chant for the Dead to be sung for Brick.

  For more detailed treatments of Brick’s life, and critical analysis of the historicity of various tales, see the bibliography.

  Preface to the Second Edition

  The Book of Brick (Annotated)

  Anthony Lumiere & Daniel Peirce, Editors

  Corvine Books, New Frisco, 0304 AC

  INTERLUDE: MAD BALLET

  The Universe is a ballet of chaos, set in motion by a mad director. Thing is, the director being mad, once the show got started, he wandered off somewhere and forgot about it. Now, any time you set something in motion and walk away, you gotta expect it’s gonna develop in its own patterns. That’s how order and sanity come about at all. Life reaches toward it naturally. You look at any chaos closely enough, you’ll see order, and vice-versa. But if life reaches toward order, at the same time, it reaches toward chaos, since part of us always wants to go back to our roots.

  And who knows? Maybe the director comes by now and then, remembers the mad ballet, and throws some more madness and chaos into the mix. Not always a bad thing, necessarily.

  Soul-Are is the light and order that evolve out of that mad ballet. Soul-Are is the chaos that breeds, and breeds in, the light and order. Soul-Are is the fact that all the dancers are one troop, one tribe, one family, not separate at all from each other, or from the stage they dance on. It exists whether the dancers recognize it or not, but recognizing it can free you from the choreography of insanity.

  —The 23 Blessings, The Book of Brick

  2. WOLF

  Back around the time of the Great Crash, a huge earthquake knocked a big chunk of what was then the western coastline into the ocean. A whole bunch of places that had formerly been desert waste became beachfront property in a hurry. Probably would have done wonders for the real estate market, had it existed post-Crash.

  Bay City grew up during the Reconstruction on the ruins of a smaller city. Couldn’t tell you what that older city was called, though I’m sure you could find a historian who knows. I hear there was a pre-Crash “Bay City” somewhere in the northeast, but I couldn’t tell you anything about that one either, other than that they apparently once had a famous rollerblading team.

  As we soared over the desert, I could make out a glow on the horizon. Lot of power in Bay City. With its lights blurred by the rain it looked like a big glowing crescent, cupping the landward end of Baja Bay, spreading out for a couple of miles on either side of the Coronado River where it empties into the ocean.

  “Look at this.” Morgan raised her voice, turning the comp unit so I could see the screen. “You know Bay City produces so much electricity, they actually sell the surplus to other cities and zone towns nearby?”

  I glanced at the screen. Looked like the city had some huge wind farms, and immense fields of solar collectors. By the sea it would get wind constantly, and except for the brief seasonal storms, they had sun pretty much all the time. The article said the city had been rich to begin with, but after the People’s Takeover some 27 years ago it had surged ahead to rival Gatesville as one of
the west’s major tech centers. I would have been nine at the time, traveling with my Pa, a couple of years or so after our first encounter with Micah Roth.

  “Anything about killings?” I asked.

  She flicked through several screens. “Serial killer,” she said, handing me the unit. “Call him ‘The Beast.’”

  I glanced over the articles, got the general idea, and handed the unit back. I didn’t want to study the media on it until I’d had a chance to study the actual evidence.

  Normally, after the time we’d spent in the arid zones, I’d have welcomed a little rain, but this gray night-drizzle was depressing for some reason. One of the things I liked about being in the zones was the herbal smell that rose up off the desert whenever it got one of these rare rainstorms. Just now, all I could smell was motor oil and the ozone scent of the ’thopter’s electric engine. The sounds of the engine, the clatter of the wings and the propeller were all too loud for extended conversation. I stared out through the ’thopter’s scratched perspex cupola. The lights of Bay City were diffused and piss-yellow in the distance, and I could now make out individual buildings, at least the taller ones, like the massive City Administration Tower.

  Looking at the blurry skyline of Bay City, I was remembering other sounds, other smells... cigars and liquor, clinking ice cubes and flipping cards, grunted remarks. It had been in Bay City I’d first experienced the visions that would eventually put the tattoos on my face and the black coat on my back. I was just a kid then, trailing around after my itinerant gambler father, Pa following some obscure path on a chaotic map drawn by the gods of chance, a map that only he could read, leading from poker here to crops or jackflash there, from a back room or a fancy casino to a back alley or a gaming hell, from destitution to piles of cash and back again.

  There had been a poker game that night, and I was alternating between sleepily watching the play and dozing off curled up in the corner. I came a little more awake at one point, wandered over to Pa’s chair and looked over his shoulder. The game was down to my father and a big fat fellow across from him, and the fat guy had called. I was sure Pa was a shoe-in with his kings full house, but the fat guy grinned and laid down a suicide jack-high straight flush.

  I was smelling oranges and burnt hair. When I looked up at the fat guy, instead of exulting at his win, his face was a picture of despair. He drew out an automatic pistol and put the barrel against his own temple. A second before he pulled the trigger, I screamed—I think it was “No!” or “Don’t!” or something like that. Then suddenly the world shifted, and there wasn’t any gun, the fat guy was grinning like a loon, and everybody was laughing.

  “Don’t sweat it, kid,” someone said. “Your Dad can afford it.”

  I looked at my father and saw he wasn’t happy; but it was clear to me that he was more disturbed by my outburst than by the result of the game. It was also clear that the whole bit with the gun had been some sort of vision or hallucination; no one had seen it but me.

  “It’s okay,” Pa said quietly.

  A month or so later I would learn that the fat guy had killed himself—not over cards, but over a woman. Or at least most folks thought the woman leaving him was the last straw in a series of bad news items in his life that led to his suicide.

  At the time I had no concept of what this whole business of visions was all about, and for some years I would struggle with trying to live a normal life, or as normal a life as an itinerant gambler’s son can live. Worked at shutting out the weirdness of having visions, seeing ghosts, hearing voices, and having animals talk to me. Eventually I couldn’t shut it out any longer, and I turned to the Railwalkers for help. Little did I know that I’d end up joining the order.

  When the ornithopter finally landed on the roof of the City Administration Tower, we climbed out and crossed to a covered walkway leading to the elevator. Six uniformed guardsmen stood at attention under the plasglass awning, led by a short, well-built young Hispanic woman wearing a sergeant’s bars. Her black hair was tied into a bun, pulled back so tightly it looked like it must hurt. Eyes so dark brown they looked black in this light stared across the rooftop through the mists as we approached. The whole group stood at attention as we came up to the awning, and she saluted as if we were visiting guardsmen from another city. Guard usually treats us like civilians—civilians of rank, perhaps, but still civilians, for all that.

  As she opened her mouth to speak a man pushed past the guards, a figure in a long coat that resembled a Crow coat, but without the patches.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked as we reached the stairwell.

  There was a Force to his voice, a minor magick, one that any of us would disdain to use in such a manner. You put a Force in your voice to quiet a panicked crowd or tame a wilding animal, not to impress somebody at a first meeting. And with our coats, eye tats, and head scarves, it had to be pretty obvious what we were, if not who. I chose to answer him formally, as though he’d spoken the ritual question.

  “Wolf am I, Walker of the Rails Between the Worlds, charged by Ianeh, seventh of her line from Brick, the Red Crow. Say your need.”

  I could feel the look Rok was giving the back of my head. Technically the ritual doesn’t require the phrase “Twenty-three blessings of Soul-Are upon you and yours” between the kinline and “say your need,” but it’s customary. Don’t get me wrong, Rok is not one of those anal, by-the-book types, mostly. He’s just a bit particular about the rituals of the Order. My guess was that if it had been Rok, he’d have just ignored the guy and brushed by him.

  The guy looked at me and gave a smirk. “Not the same Wolf who got lost in the Otherworld for three days trying to find Oakwood?” he asked. “Hear that was the talk of the Railwalker Academy back then.”

  3. WOLF

  It was true. As a student at the Railwalker Academy I was a real woodchuck sometimes, like any student is. I was older than most of the other students, but apparently not much wiser. So when Brecht came up with his challenge, like an idiot I accepted it.

  I was second degree at that time, looking at taking my third. We’d been hanging in the student lounge, and Dirk was all full of first-degree enthusiasm about traveling the Otherworld physically. We all do soul travel in the Otherworld from our initiation on, but to qualify for third, a second degree has to move physically between worlds, as well as astrally. Dirk had just been introduced to the concept. Brecht had laughed at Dirk’s newbie ebullience.

  “It’s not such a big deal, little otter,” he said. The otter was Dirk’s ally. “Bricks do it all the time.” Brecht was aiming for a position as a Brick, though most of us figured he’d end up a Bear.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Brecht’s a real expert at it. He’s traveled there, what, at least two or three whole times now.”

  “Five times. Twice by myself.” Which was absolutely forbidden, unless you’d made third degree.

  “You’re an idiot,” I said. “You’re still only second.”

  “Oh, right, Wolf, like you’re ready to go walk the rails tomorrow.”

  “Readier than you are, numbnuts.”

  “Yeah? Prove it.”

  “Fuck you, Brecht. I got nothing to prove.”

  “Methinks the Wolf doth protest too much. You may have traveled the planes more often, but I got a natural talent for it. You’ll never be as good as me.” He stood and began pumping a fist in the air to a beat only he was hearing. “I am a rail-walking super-brick, a raven among crows. My ally is the mountain lion, as everybody knows. We eat otters for breakfast, and wolfies for lunch. I got a prof’s mega-brain and a bear’s killer punch. I got the power of Soul-Are a-rippin’ through my mind, and in walking the rails I leave y’all behind. So don’t pit yourself against the champion Brick, ’cause we already know you got a little tiny dick.”

  He finished leaning over me, his hands on the arms of my chair, his face inches from mine. If I’d jerked my knee up I’d have caught him right in the crotch, and I had a half a mind to do it, and h
ard.

  “I repeat: You’re an idiot. Get out of my face before I hurt you.”

  He looked down at my knee, straightened up, and stepped back. “A contest,” he said. “You and me. Traveling in body. Here to…. We come out at the Rustic. Last one there buys a round.”

  I know, I should have told him to fuck off. Instead, I said, “You’re on.”

  Every Railwalker sees the Otherworld differently. It can be a world of light, or one of fog and shadow, a world made of crystal or glass or neon. It may imitate this world, or present a surreal, distorted aspect.

  I see it as a version of this world painted in strange. There are buildings and roads that roughly correspond to ours, but they always look not quite the same, oddly off, in a way I can’t remember the particulars of when I’m back in this world.

  When I opened my eyes in the Otherworld, Brecht was nowhere to be seen. I left the building and headed quickly toward the place I thought in this world would correspond to the Rustic Tap in ours. I was feeling extremely queasy, my guts rumbling and turning over, my skin seeming hypersensitive. My body knew it didn’t belong here, and wanted to get the hell back to the normal world. I hurried faster, even though this made me feel sicker.

  I didn’t recognize the girl who came running from the Oakwood Bridge, but I knew immediately she was a lost soul. Her eyes were wild as she ran at me. I caught her as she caromed into me, and it was like grabbing hold of cotton candy—there, but not quite. She wasn’t here in body, like I was.