Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  I sat up, examined my wounded right leg. It was a shallow slash across the outside of my right thigh, painful, but not dangerous or debilitating. I tore a strip off my headscarf and bound it up. Then I stood again, favoring my wounded leg, and looked around. I realized I was hearing a slightly hollow sound, almost an echo of the lapping waves. I looked to my right, and there it was. Across the water some yards away, where it would have been concealed from the view from the open water, I saw a cave. I returned to the boat and rowed my way over to it. As I did I could hear the peculiar wheezing sound the wind takes on in a scaledust storm. What light there was was tinted purple now. I could see no dust in the air yet, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. I rowed faster.

  I risked shining my battery torch into the cave for a moment. It was deep, and at the back I saw a gleam of metal. I guided the boat inside.

  51. WOLF

  Not far into the cave the ceiling dipped, and I could see by the high-water mark that come high tide the boat wouldn’t fit. Auden had assured me high tide was a couple of hours off yet.

  Beyond that point the cave opened up again. Then it rose and turned. There was a dock, but no boat. Gage’s men had found a small boat on the beach below Hartshall, and it looked as if the Beast had arrived in it. I wondered if it was normally kept docked here. I tied up at the dock and got out.

  I was in a vast chamber. At the far end a faint light flickered, a small flame. I drew Auden’s air gun and stood still for a moment, letting my eyes adjust.

  At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Strange sculptures hung on the rock walls. On a closer look the sculptures resolved into collections of body parts—heads, hands, internal organs. Some were mounted with steel spikes, some bound with ropes, some simply hanging there as if in defiance of gravity, although some sort of adhesive had to have been used. All the parts had been dried and preserved, leaving them with no charnel odor. Further along, where the floor of the cave was flattest, there was a large clear area, around the edges of which were scattered the familiar accouterments of a dojo: wakimara; heavy bag; barrels of rice and pea gravel; and a rack holding swords, spears, staves, canes, billies, and a variety of knives.

  At the back of the cave, to the right, was a large wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a single bed. To the left, a wide double circle had been inscribed on the floor. Some sort of runes I didn’t recognize were written in the space between the inner and outer rings. Beyond that a solidly built wooden staircase rose up to a landing, where a door was set into the wall of the cave.

  At the very back was the shrine. An altar with a cauldron on it; above it, suspended by chains, was an oil lamp, the source of the light. This hadn’t been left lit by accident. It was an eternal light. It represented the Beast’s idea of god or goddess or something, as well as his devotion to it.

  To Her, I corrected myself. I was being too careful, thinking like a lawyer or a scientist. I knew perfectly well what the Beast believed in. This was a shrine to his goddess, his mother, a woman who took a child and twisted it into a killer, compelling the kid to worship her, do her bidding. She had denied that kid the basic things the poorest humans take for granted: community, family, human contact. She’d turned the poor kid into the killing machine we called the Beast, and turned him loose on Bay City, just to get back at Roth.

  And maybe she was also my mother. Which meant that there, but for the grace of Soul-Are, went I. Instead of a Railwalker facing one of his hardest challenges, I might have been a Beast, dead under a Railwalker’s sword. Did I have it in me to become something like that? Yeah, I thought reluctantly, given the same brainwashing and conditioning at an early enough age, I might have. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.

  And if Helena Crichton was my mother, that meant that the Beast I had killed was my brother, or half-brother at least.

  I climbed the stairs, staying close to the edge to avoid creaks. There were none. The place was well maintained.

  At the top of the stair I put my back to the door and narrowed my senses, reaching out to feel the energies of the place. Something was alive here, to the southwest of where I now stood. I drew the air gun and eased the door open. Stepped through the door.

  It was dark. I could dimly tell I was in a long corridor with doors on either side. Faint light glowed at each end of the corridor. I took out my torch, and before turning it on, dialed it down to its lowest setting.

  The corridor I found myself in was not well maintained. From what I could make out in the dim torchlight it was exactly what you’d expect in a hotel left abandoned for twenty or thirty years: filthy, cobweb ridden, the carpets rotting, sconces fallen from the walls. It smelled of rot. I moved through the darkened corridors, keeping to a southwesterly direction. The place had obviously been an expensive hotel when it was new. The halls were wide, the doors hand-carved. Ahead of me light seeped into the corridor, and I could hear the howling of the wind louder now. Mindful that parts of the hotel might be open to the storm, I dug out my breathing filter and put it on.

  As I got closer to the glow, I realized that it was coming through a glass wall with French doors. Many panes were broken. The glass that was left was milky, dirty and smudged. The doors led to a wide courtyard, now overgrown, with a large pool in the center. Scaledust swept though the open space like purple snow. At the opposite end of the courtyard steps led up to another set of French doors. Peering across the open space, I could see something of the room beyond, a large function room of some sort. I couldn’t make out the source of the glow at the back of that room, but the blue-white color of the glow suggested an artificial light source.

  The French doors were unlocked. I eased one open. It creaked slightly. I froze and waited. There was no sound to indicate anyone had heard it above the sound of the wind. I slipped through the door. Scaledust could burn your skin if you were exposed to it too long, but as long as you had a gasmask or breathing filter you wouldn’t suffer permanent damage.

  I left the door open behind me. There was no telling how many people might be in the building besides Hannah Caine and the kidnapped girl, but I was guessing it was just the three of us. In any case, the risk of Caine or any cronies she might have with her finding the open door was less than the risk of a second creak being heard. Chances were, Caine was near that light source.

  I walked quickly toward the light. My skin was already stinging from the purple dust swirling through the air. As I approached the pool there was a splash. A bay gator hauled itself up out of the dark water, its beady eyes fixed on me. It scrambled toward me much faster than I would have thought the ungainly looking creature could move on land.

  A single shot from the borrowed air gun splattered half the gator’s head across the flagstones. The body scrambled forward a few steps before collapsing on the flags. I crouched, drawing back into the shelter of a creosote bush. For long moments there was no sound except the wind playing through the leaves. The bay gator hadn’t roared or made any vocal sound, but the noise of its progress across the stone floor had been louder than the wind or the creaky French door. I wondered if Caine was not, after all, near the light. Perhaps the room I was approaching was empty. Or perhaps Rochelle was tied up in there, and Caine was elsewhere. No telling.

  I stepped past the gory splatter that had once been a nasty amphibious predator and started across the courtyard again. Passing the pool, I could see more of the room ahead. It was large, with a raised platform or stage at the back. The light source was a portable camping lamp, set on the edge of the stage. In the center of the room was some sort of high table, draped with a cloth that hung to the floor. Under the cloth was an irregular shape—a body. Rochelle? No, too large for a twelve year-old girl. The Beast, maybe?

  I heard a splash of water again. As I turned, my right leg exploded in pain as it was jerked out from under me. I crashed to the flagstones, the air gun flying from my grip. The bloody cheap thing discharged as it hit the flags. One of the French doors ahead dissolved in a shower of glas
s. I’d forgotten that Rogers had said bay gators hunt in pairs. The bay gator dragged me backward, toward the pool. Air gun out of reach, I twisted and whipped the sword from its back scabbard. The bay gator lurched backwards, and I was just able to snatch a deep breath as it dragged me over the edge into the pool.

  I’d expected I might be submerged, but hadn’t expected the pool to be so deep. The gator swum down, dragging me by the leg. Above us the small circle of dim light that was the surface of the pool got smaller, and then I was yanked sideways into darkness. My free foot and my elbows and hands banged off rock as the gator surged forward through the underwater tunnel. I couldn’t see, couldn’t get an angle to bring my sword to bear. I gritted my teeth on the breathing filter, determined not to lose it, though I wasn’t sure how immersion might affect it. My lungs felt about to explode when there was suddenly light again as the tunnel opened into another pool. The monster slowed, and I bent at the waist and slashed at it. My cut took it behind the head, severing the spinal cord. A cloud of blood billowed out. It stopped moving but did not let go. Its small, black eye rolled up to stare at me. The damned thing wasn’t dead, just paralyzed from the neck down. I reversed my grip on the sword and plunged the point into the creature’s eye, driving steel into its primitive brain. The beast uttered a sound something between a sigh and a squeal, which echoed weirdly in the water. I was pretty sure it was dead. But it still did not release its grip on my leg.

  My chest was on fire. I couldn’t swim to the surface for the weight of the bay gator’s body dragging me down. I struck again, once, twice, and the body fell away, drifting to the bottom. I was drifting up now, despite the weight of the thing’s head still attached to my leg. I swam up, broke the surface and blew out through the filter, spraying water, and then heaved in the air. The filter gurgled but allowed me to breathe.

  My face began to sting. Once I had my breath back I swam to the edge and pulled myself out, dragging the bay gator’s head with me. I lurched out onto flagstones. As the gator’s head struck the edge of the pool the pain made me scream, and I lost the breathing filter. I started to inhale involuntarily, stopped myself as my throat began to burn. Holding what little breath I had left, I grabbed for the breathing filter, but it skittered away and dropped into the pool.

  My face and hands had begun to sting, and then burn, and my lungs were aching again. I looked around. I was in a large patio overlooking the sea, more exposed to the storm than the confined courtyard had been. The air around me was thick with the purple dust. The pool I’d come out of was larger than the one I’d gone in through.

  Half crawling, half limping, I dragged myself and the head that gripped my leg to one of the six glass doors that gave onto the patio from the hotel. Only two of them were boarded over, the rest missing only a pane or three apiece, and I wondered why more of this glass had survived than in some of the interior doors. It didn’t make sense.

  My head was spinning, my lungs screaming. The doors were unlocked. It didn’t have to make sense, I thought. This was Wonderland, Hell, Chinatown, the Hotel California. I had to treat it like I’d treat the Otherworld if I wanted to survive. Hannah Caine’s world would operate by Otherworld logic. I fell inside. With my free foot I shoved the door closed behind me.

  I crawled down the rotting carpet of the interior hall until I was away from the purple dust that wafted in through the broken panes. Then I finally took a lungful of air. Heaven. I took off my headscarf and did my best to wipe the dust from my face and hands. The fine, soft cotton felt like sandpaper, and made my skin burn harder for a moment, but after a few moments it subsided a bit. I made careful to let the dust touch only one side of the folded cloth, and shook it out as best I could after. I was going to need it to bind my leg, and didn’t want the dust getting in my wounds.

  Dissection time, I thought. Glancing around me frequently, wary of any reaction to the noise I’d made, I inserted the end of the sword between my leg and the back of the bay gator’s jaws and began sawing away at the jaw muscles.

  Minutes later I was cursing my ignorance of amphibian anatomy. Apparently the muscles that held the jaw closed weren’t where I’d expected them to be, and cutting from inside the mouth I’d have had to cut through bone to reach them. I stopped for a moment, looking around and listening. Nothing. No sign of Hannah Caine or anyone else. My lungs still felt scorched, and I wondered if I’d inhaled any dust.

  I turned back to the bay gator head. I withdrew the blade from between its jaws and began cutting at the thing’s cheek. That did it. As the animal’s blood seeped from the cuts I’d made, staining the carpet black in the feeble light, I could feel a slight loosening on the side toward me. Now I had only to reach the other muscles, on the side of the thing’s face that was toward my foot. That was a lot harder, trying to angle the sword into the muscles of its cheek without slicing my own leg as I worked.

  Finally the pressure on my leg released and I was able to move the jaws apart and examine the damage. Fortunately I’d severed the thing’s spine before it was able to get to work shaking its head and chewing and worrying at my leg, shredding it the way the other bay gator had shredded Rogers’s arm. The wound was a series of ragged holes on either side of the leg. It was bleeding a lot. I bound it up with my head scarf. I hoped no scaledust had gotten into the wounds. They hurt like hell but didn’t burn, so I was thinking I’d been lucky. The skin of my face and hands felt scorched, but that would heal. As long as I hadn’t inhaled any, or gotten any dust in my bloodstream, I should be good. I wasn’t sure about that, though. The fire in my lungs might be just from the punishment they’d taken. All I could do was hope that was true.

  Taking stock was not encouraging. I had been wounded twice in the right leg, scale-burned, possibly poisoned, I had lost my breathing filter and both guns—the air gun back in the courtyard, my Gunspire somewhere in the underwater tunnel. All I had for weapons now was the sword Auden had given me. At least my left leg was still functioning, if a bit bruised. I got to my feet. Took an experimental step or two. Yeah, it wasn’t comfortable, but I could walk. I hoped I wouldn’t have to do any running.

  I had no idea how far the bay gator had dragged me, but my guess was that the courtyard we’d left from was at the center of the building, and now I was in the western end.

  I advanced down the wide corridor. I was dripping. This wouldn’t do. I stopped to wring the worst of the water out of my tunic. At least Caine wouldn’t hear me slosh as I got near her.

  The compass in my head told me to go straight ahead—that the tunnel the bay gator had dragged me through led back this way.

  Soon I saw a glow ahead. I had been right. I was approaching the same courtyard again, from a different angle. This glass-paneled door did not squeak as the other had. I approached the pool slowly, limping. My wounded leg was getting really unhappy. I told it to shut the hell up.

  The storm was letting up. The flagstones of the courtyard were dusted with purple, but the air was no longer colored with the dust. I looked around, trying to locate the air gun. It wasn’t where I’d thought it had fallen earlier. When the French door had been shattered most of the glass had fallen inside the room, but a scatter of glass fragments decorated the steps, strewn among the fallen leaves on the cracked stones. But no air gun. I peered into the overgrown foliage to either side of the doors and steps. Still no air gun. I was sure the gun had gone off on impact, that my dropping it as I fell couldn’t possibly have sent the gun itself through the glass of the door. The broken door yawned on its hinges. It had been closed before. The shot would not have caused it to open.

  This did not bode well. Could someone—Hannah Caine, or one of her people or creatures—have stepped out, grabbed the gun, and retreated back into the room while I was being dragged away by the bay gator?

  I stepped through the shattered door and into the room.

  52. WOLF

  Hannah Caine appeared on the low stage at the other end of the chamber. I’d expected her to be dre
ssed down for her escape through the city, but she was in a long, flowing robe, open, over a tunic and loose pants. Somehow, despite the squalor of her surroundings, she managed to look immaculate. I’d expected to see her pointing the air gun at me, but instead she carried a sword. An ancient one, by the look of it. Possibly an original Osoto.

  She walked to the body on the table. “Welcome to the Hotel California...” she said. “Son.”

  What could I say? “Thanks, Mom?” Or, “I’m no son of yours?” Gods, did that sound like a tired cliché from an old DV show. So I said nothing.

  “You look like shit. Don’t you know better than to go running around outside in a scaledust storm? What’s the matter, boy? Nothing to say? You had plenty to say at Summersend. Cut quite a rug, you did. Embarrassed at getting a hard-on over an old woman? Worse yet, over your own Mommy, the quim that brought you in?” She chuckled. “Poor little Oedipus, wants to kill his daddy and fuck his mommy. And you did want to kill dear old daddy, didn’t you? When you met Doc in that game room? Of course I knew he was here. I felt it when the two of you came together. Bitterness has such a lovely tang when you drink its emanations.”

  She stepped closer to the table and drew the shroud back from the body. The cloth slithered to the ground. It revealed the body of the Beast, the half-healed shoulder wound still looking like raw meat. “His name was Varger,” she said. “A book of names would tell you that it means ‘outlaw’ or ‘outcast,’ which is certainly appropriate. Do you know where that name comes from?”

  Almost involuntarily, I shook my head.

  “It is from the German ‘warg,’ meaning ‘wolf.’ You’ve joined your new friend Auden as a kinslayer. You’ve killed your brother wolf, Wolf.”

  “Many times,” I said. “Every man is my brother.”

  “Oh, bullshit. Don’t read to me from the Book of Brick. I didn’t leave the Railwalker Academy because my scholarship was deficient. You have killed your blood brother, the son of your mother.”