Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series

by David Farland

  “I’m talking to you now as if I were a human,” Chaa said, and he closed his eyes. “I think I should explain this more like a Pwi. There is more to this magic than I have said. You have seen Anee, you have seen how the Starfarers formed it. They speak of their technology—of geneticists and DNA—and they think they formed this world. I am happy to let them think so. But that is not how this planet was formed.”

  “If you don’t think the Starfarers created Anee,” Tull asked, “then how did it get here?”

  “Oh, the Starfarers made it with their hands, but I will tell you a secret my father revealed me,” Chaa said. “A hundred thousand years ago, on Earth, a shaman of the Pwi met a human. The Pwi woke every day and sang the world into being, and he had few tools, but this human with his clever hands had fashioned many tools—knives, spear points, hide scrapers, bowls, needles. The human did not sing the world into shape with his heart and tongue, he molded it with his hands.

  “The Pwi looked down on this human, and saw that the human, in his own way, was ‘dancing’ a new world into being, and that his dance would conflict with the song of the Pwi.

  “Since the human was weaker, the Pwi could have killed him and ended the conflict, but the Pwi took pity. So, many Pwi gathered, and together they sang of two worlds—a world where the humans could dance with their hands, and a world where the Pwi would sing with their hearts.

  “Earth became the home for the humans, and all the Pwi traveled to the Land of Shapes to wait.

  “Now, the humans have returned the gift, using their hands to make this world. Anee will be the new home for the Pwi, forever. So we must begin again to sing the world into being each morning.” Chaa hesitated. “Can you even imagine that this would become a peaceful world?”

  “No,” Tull said. “I walked the future in the Land of Shapes. I don’t see much hope for peace.”

  “Then you must dream it into being,” Chaa answered. “You must dream it into being, and you must become a man of peace yourself. Sing your true name each morning, remember your center, do no harm to others, then sing of the world of peace, as I do each day. If enough people do that, peace will wash through this land like a flood.”

  Tull reflected on the words, and felt guilty for having strayed so far. He recalled walking home in the dark in Smilodon Bay, trying to avoid stepping on a blade of grass or an earthworm. Reverence for life, reverence for the world. That was all Chaa really wanted from him.

  “I will try,” Tull said. “I will sing the world into being each day.”

  “Good,” Chaa clapped him on the shoulder. “You have come far in a year. Someday, perhaps, you will make a good shaman to the Pwi. Now we must speak of other things: Tantos will have Atherkula hunt for Phylomon,” Chaa said, “and I do not have the power to fight Atherkula.”

  “I know,” Tull said.

  “Yet, your spirit eyes are opening. You have seen how the Sorcerers of the Blade Kin capture their quarry. They bind us with the shadows of their souls.”

  “Yes,” Tull said.

  “That is not how a Spirit Walker connects,” Chaa warned. “We walk in a more peaceful way. To walk the paths of the future for a person, I must first learn them and learn the souls of all those who might connect to that person later. I entwine one strand of lightning from my soul with each of theirs, then let the tips of those strands dance over the shadows of their souls. Then I step back in time to the moment of that person’s birth, and relive what they have lived, and I learn them—their thoughts, their loves, their secret fears and ambitions.

  “Only then, when I have lived their lives with them, can I move ahead into the future. Yet, to do so perfectly, I would have to walk the future of all men, bind myself to all of their loves, all of their fears.

  “No one can do all of this—to even try, drives one to madness.

  “Yet,” Chaa continued, “to glimpse even part of the future, you must connect with many people—touch thousands at a time.”

  “How can this happen?” Tull asked.

  “You have counted the fronds of lightning in your soul. They number twenty-two. But this is true only when spirits are at rest.

  “A countless number of those lightnings reside within you, hidden beneath the shadow of your soul. When you wake more, you will be able to open yourself, reach out with many tongues of lightning at once, and taste the lives of countless men. This art of connecting, of learning the hearts of men, you are ready to practice.”

  “I … am not well enough,” Tull said.

  He thought of what it would mean to merge his consciousness with others, to lose himself, his identity. It was frightening, and he focused on that peaceful place in himself where there was no fear. He sang his true name—Path of the Crushed Heart—until peace returned, then reconsidered Chaa’s request.

  I lost myself once, Tull thought, when Mahkawn tried to steal my life away. Now, Chaa asks me to give it freely.

  Tull suddenly realized that Chaa had been working toward this moment all along, had been waiting for a genuine commitment. Chaa had known that Tull would first have to lose himself before he could learn to give himself. Tull looked into Chaa’s narrow face, into his deep eyes, knowing that Chaa had somehow arranged it, had at the very least permitted Tull to taste death.

  “I know you are weak, but the moment is coming when you must take your Spirit Walk. Once you learn this art, you will find that in the past you were a child living in a small town, someone who had come to know the meadows and the bushes around his house well, but now you will be stepping into a far larger world, with ice fields and jungles and forests that no single man has ever explored.

  “This is what it means to be a Spirit Walker. At this moment you taste freedom, and you think it is ecstasy. Now you will explore the bounds of it. I want you to bring that ecstasy to others, help me give them their freedom. That is what the art of Spirit Walking is for.”

  Tull closed his eyes, an ancient Pwi sign of acceptance. “When will I be ready to learn?”

  Chaa sighed deeply. “Learning to connect is a difficult act. It can only be done when you are at the gates of death.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Tull said.

  “I know,” Chaa answered. “If you are to connect, it is best to do so with a small child. The weight of a short life is easier to bear.”

  “Wayan,” Tull said. “I want to connect with Wayan.”

  “He is not good,” Chaa answered. “Though he is small, he has endured much.”

  “I lived through as much,” Tull answered. “I too had Jenks for a father.”

  “Very well.”

  “When should we do it?”

  “Now, if you wish,” Chaa said. “There are many paths to the Land of Shapes, as many ways as there are to die. I’ll take you to the border for only a moment, if you wish.”

  Tull nodded.

  Chaa said, “All right. Lay your head on my lap.”

  Tull found that his heart was pounding just a bit, with controlled fear. The night seemed deep and quiet, yet somewhere in the distance a dog howled.

  Nearby in the fireplace the pitch in a log popped, and the log shifted, stirring the coals. Tull lay down, his head in Chaa’s lap, and Tull sought for his own inner peace.

  Chaa whispered, “Close your eyes, Tull. Trust me. I have no seer’s tea to make this easier, so you must not fight me.”

  Tull nodded, and closed his eyes. He felt Chaa’s fingers steal over his nose and mouth. Tull tried not to fight, tried not to push Chaa away, but nature took over and he twisted.

  Chaa held on, and Tull became dizzy as his lung sought for air, tried to shove Chaa’s hand away.

  “There are as many paths to the Land of Shapes as there are ways to die,” Chaa said. “Do not worry, my friend.”

  He held tight.

  Tull gasped, struggled for air. His lungs were burning, and he kicked wildly, and spun as if he were in a great whirlwind.

  Suddenly he found himself floating free, the fire o
f his soul rushing south over barren lands. He thought of Wayan, south somewhere, and moved toward the child as if following a distant voice.

  Tull found Wayan held captive at Muskrat Creek in the dingy storage cellar of a burned-out home. Six Blade Kin held Tchavs, Vo-olai, Wayan, and several others as they waited for a ship to carry them back to Bashevgo.

  Tull floated over their sleeping forms.

  The lightning of Wayan’s soul flashed in shades of turquoise as he hovered between fear and despair. Tull floated nearby, and tried to manipulate the lightning of his own soul, tried to force the pale fronds outward. They would not bend to his will.

  Do not force it, Chaa whispered. Close your eyes. Let your spirit eyes see, let your heart touch him.

  Tull relaxed, imagined only that he wanted to touch Wayan, and the pale fronds slithered outward, across the gulf.

  The fingers of light touched Wayan, moved through the clot of his soul, and Tull sensed the boy’s uneasy sleep. He imagined caressing Wayan.

  Taste him now. Taste his hungers and his passions.

  The lightning wriggled across the shadow of Tull’s soul, entwined itself around Wayan’s own fiery tendrils, and Tull felt images come to mind, brief flashes like snowflakes blurring past his eyes in a blizzard, blinding images that melded into one another: Jenks was in many of them, a beefy-armed giant more than twice Wayan’s height.

  The great man often roared, sometimes slapped Wayan hard enough to knock him to the floor. There were images of Wayan hiding in thickets and under his bed, brief confused explosions where Jenks would capture him and chain him to his bedpost, memories of nights listening to the whistle of wind or the sound of squirrels scurrying over the roof.

  In one particularly strong memory, after Jenks had slapped the boy hard enough to knock him across the room, Wayan’s mother had warned Jenks to go easier.

  “He’s all right,” Jenks had answered. “Pwi kids are indestructible. You might as well try to break an anvil with a hammer.”

  “How many Pwi kids did you try to kill before you figured that out?” his mother had asked, and after that, Jenks called Wayan “Stonehead,” as if to somehow reinforce in both the child’s mind and in his mother’s that you could beat a Pwi all you want and never really hurt him.

  Yet for every memory of violence, Wayan cherished three or four of kindness—being held by his mother and resting his head on her breast, the treats Jenks gave out when feeling guilty for one of his crueler outbursts, playing in the tidal pools down in Smilodon Bay.

  And then Tull saw himself through Wayan’s eyes, rescuing Wayan from his natural father.

  Tull was taller and stronger than other men, but Wayan saw him as a giant with rippling muscles, a giant who could protect him from everything.

  Wayan, at age four, did not conceive of Tull as a mortal. Instead, he was an absolute—a sun that rose every morning, a mountain that never moved. Tull was protector and friend, and Fava was the feeder and the source of all wisdom.

  Tull found that Wayan’s love for Fava was more than a little arousing. The child was enamored by her touch, by the smell of her hair.

  And suddenly, Tull was being pulled back to his body, over the barren, rock-strewn earth.

  Tull lay for a long while, reconnecting himself to his own physical shell.

  The emotions came, threatened to rend him. The comfort he often took by curling to sleep by the fireplace. The fear of Jenks as a giant—a towering beast with unimaginable intent who dished out pain and favors without reason. The dull ache of teething. The thrill of sleeping next to Fava. The nightmare of listening to squirrels on the roof crack nuts, fearing that they were small monsters cracking bones with their teeth. Dreams of grasshoppers eating his legs. Being captured by Blade Kin in a swamp and carried to a land rumored to be ruled by Adjonai, the God of Fear.

  All the horror and hope of Wayan’s short life came at once, unmooring Tull, threatening to sweep his sanity into oblivion the way a tide sweeps sand sculptures from the beach.

  Chaa was there holding Tull, calming him with a touch as if Tull were a child himself. Tull’s heart was pounding and his very skin seemed to ache. He wanted to scream the pain out, but Tull found that he could only whimper.

  “You did well,” Chaa said. “You did well. For a few nights, you will have horrible dreams. For a few days, you will live in pain. But it will pass. You two have become one.”

  ***

  Chapter 23: Woman’s Magic

  Two days later, in the first shadows of evening, Fava and Darrissea and Chaa got up and prepared to sneak Tull down to the docks.

  The group gathered in the doorway of the old apartment, while the men made final preparations upstairs—putting on their disguises.

  Fava’s younger sisters clung to her legs, trying to keep Fava from leaving. Zhopila cast her eyes around as if to keep from having to look at Fava. Outside, the moon Thor was setting with the sun, and a strong gravitational wind hissed through the streets, rattling the walls of the old apartments, seeping through cracks.

  Fava went to her mother, held the woman. Zhopila hugged Fava back, her arms weak, loose. Fava rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, smelling the familiar scent of her hair, and said quietly, “The kwea of this day is good, for I am leaving Bashevgo with my husband. Soon, we can all return home.”

  “I will never see you again,” Zhopila cried. “I feel it. You are going to go to the island of the Creators, and you will die there. You might not even get free of Bashevgo. What if the Blade Kin catch you trying to steal a boat?”

  “You worry too much,” Fava whispered.

  “That is my duty,” Zhopila said, “to worry for my children when they are too stupid to worry for themselves.”

  “I am worried, too,” Fava admitted. “I will take care of myself.”

  Zhopila pushed Fava back at arm’s length, held Fava’s shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes. “No, you will not take care of yourself,” Zhopila said, as if gauging her. “I have seen you—always giving, always helping others. You will not take care of yourself. You will take care of others.”

  “Is that so bad?” Fava asked.

  Zhopila reached down, touched Fava’s belly. “If you take care of anyone, take care of this one first. You must stay alive, if only for your child.”

  “I will,” Fava said.

  Zhopila nodded sincerely. “You are a woman of the old blood, with a child in your belly. Soon, the child will open, and a spirit must enter it. This is a very important time. Did old Vi teach you how to Summon a spirit?”

  “No,” Fava whispered. “She did not know I was pregnant.”

  The men were stirring by the door, packing up bundles as they prepared to leave.

  “That is a shame,” Zhopila said. “As the daughter of a Spirit Walker, you should be able to choose the spirit of your child. When I Summoned you, there were many spirits nearby in the Land of Shapes, anxious to enter your body.

  “But I saw the lightning of your soul, so brilliant beyond all others, and I called to you. I knew you were special.

  “When you return, I will teach you the woman’s magic, prepare you to Summon a powerful spirit to the body of your child.”

  Fava nodded and hugged her mother once again while the others stood by the door. She kissed each of her little sisters one last time and smiled at them, hoping to leave them with good kwea, and then Fava, Darrissea, and Chaa made their way down to the docks. Tull was still weak, too weak to make the journey without resting, but even Wertha remarked at Tull’s rapid recovery.

  The streets bustled with people, and the docks smelled strongly of fish and seals, for the fleets were beginning to work in the Straits of Zerai. No one stopped them.

  Tull was formidable in his Blade Kin disguise, followed by Chaa dressed as a sorcerer, so deeply robed and cowled and exuding such fierce power that anyone who saw him would merely step aside.

  So they passed the guards at the dogs, who merely saluted Tull’s unif
orm.

  They found a tugboat, a newly painted steel vessel with two great turbine engines. It was smaller than Tull wanted—at only forty feet—yet Chaa argued that it would serve their needs well, for it had a broad hull and a deep keel and would not flip over in a storm, and since the engines were powered by one of the Starfarer’s ancient energy cubes, no one would have to feed it fuel.

  The harbor master spotted them cleaning the boat, preparing it to sail, and questioned them.

  Chaa told him some story, off at whispering distance. The harbor master looked frightened, then allowed them to work in peace as they loaded the boat with food and supplies. The job took the entire day.

  Long after dark, under the cover of night, Phylomon crept down to the docks and joined them.

  He immediately set sail into the uncharted waters of the north, where ice floes were so common that only Craal’s bravest sailors would go there to hunt giant Pleistocene walruses that sometimes weighed as much as a young mammoth.

  The ice in the north was thick, still breaking up, and they took four days in a zigzag course, trying to navigate to an island drawn on a crude map—written from memory by a blood-eater.

  The map was little help, but the creature had known the number of days it had sailed, and the general direction it had come from.

  The northern winds bit down on the small boat, freezing those inside. Brief winter storms buffeted them often, sometimes arriving and passing in minutes. All but Phylomon spent their days huddled in thick blankets.

  By day, they searched the horizon for signs of an island, and at night they let their vessel float, keeping their bow to the wind in hopes that they would not be thrown too far off.

  After searching for the island for nearly a week, Phylomon finally admitted that perhaps they had drifted too far off course.

  “We can be sure only that we are in the right ocean,” he said. “We probably passed it in the dark during a squall.”