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

by David Farland

  On the plains south of Bashevgo, Apple Breath rose from a thin crust of snow. Hundreds of Hukm had wakened from their faint and lay panting on the ground. She stared, dazed, to the north, unable to fully comprehend what she had just seen, what she felt, but knew that a new love for and understanding of the Meat People had blossomed within her.

  A warm south wind blew across the plains, thawing the snow so that here and there, green clumps of sweetgrass rose from the ground.

  The smell of the rich soil and sweetgrasses made her mouth water, but Apple Breath sat on her rump in the snow, the wind ruffling her white fur, and pulled out her great wood flute from its sack, then played a song that spoke of the peace she felt within.

  Tull released the world and the Eridani—let go the lightning of their souls.

  He heard crowds of tens of thousands lamenting, felt their wounds, felt their strength.

  Thunatra Dream Woman still danced in a circle, singing, but a storm seemed to blow across the Land of Shapes.

  The wind hammered the beast, snagging his shield of despair and kutow of terror. Dust blew across the beast’s broad back, as if wind were carving a sand dune, blowing portions of the creature away.

  Beneath the unrelenting wind the giant diminished, pared away until only a Pwi boy stood on the plains in the Land of Shapes, frightened and alone.

  Tull still caressed the boy with one tendril of light. He looked into the child’s green eyes, watched as light erupted from the shadow of the boy’s soul.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Tull whispered to Terrazin. “We are brothers, you and I.” The two were still connected, and Tull let his love, his peace, flow into the boy. “We are Pwi.”

  Across the Land of Shapes to the south, the arcane structures of the Blade Kin toppled, and everywhere over the vast red plain the stones cracked and splintered as a new world of possibilities formed.

  The earth shook until the very soil seemed to roar. Tull tried to open his physical eyes, but it was hard. His physical ears could hear a rumbling. The very earth seemed ready to crack open.

  Across Bashevgo, people were screaming, and Fava was rushing toward the Cage of Bones.

  Tull felt a great sense of peace wash through him. He drifted upward, looked down at the clot of his soul, at the thin gel lying in the Cage of Bones, hand outstretched.

  He drifted higher toward a sun that beckoned him, a great iridescent purple flower. The fiery spirits of birds shot through the sky as a flock of starlings passed beneath him. Gazing down, he saw the world roaring, the ground buckling as if it were a sea at storm. Sixty million people shouted in pain, trying to cope with the vision.

  Far below, Fava wept and pulled at the bars of Tull’s cage. She grasped his hand, shouting, “Don’t die! Don’t die! Don’t let yourself die!”

  Yet Tull was already gone from his body as he considered the request. He looked down on the world of flesh.

  He’d touched them all, felt their lives, learned to love them. That was all he had come to this world for, and the clot of his soul had begun to turn opaque, the same red hue as the stones around it.

  As the clot of his soul darkened, it reminded Tull of a door to a house, closing, shutting off the light that gleamed from the comfortable fireplace within. It was a door that would bar him from ever entering again.

  Fava was shouting for help, pulling on the chains to the Cage of Bones, grasping Tull’s hands, pleading with him not to die.

  Blood flowed from the vertical slit in her right wrist, but she ignored it, felt numbed to the pain.

  The visions had come to her so quickly that even now she could not comprehend them all. Her ankles seemed to ache from the night that she/Tull had been sentenced to death in Craal and had been hung by the feet and whipped. Her lips still burned from the aphrodisiac kisses of a Dryad. She still suffered the shock of watching her brothers be slain in the wilderness, eaten by Mastodon Men. The joy of her wedding day. Fascination with clocks. The full emotional force of a lifetime all crashed in a tumult around her, and she knew that it would take days, even years, for her to recover.

  All across Bashevgo people were crying out, trying to cope with the visions, and down on the Street of Dissidents, the spectators who had come to watch her execution all crawled about on their bellies blindly.

  A massive black cloud rose to the north as a volcano blew. The earth shook as if Bashevgo might split apart. Fava could hear buildings toppling in the city, and some of those who shouted might have been dying. Fava barely managed to crawl to Tull.

  Her father Chaa wrested the keys from a dead guard and managed to stand upright as he unlocked the cage.

  Fava struggled through her tears to look into Tull’s face. His eyes were the color of dying grass. He stared up at the sun blindly, with rivulets of blood running down his forehead. His face was pale, his skin bloodless. He had stopped breathing. Yet beyond that, Fava felt that his spirit was gone. He had emptied out his body. He had left.

  She closed her eyes, panting. A spasm of grief washed through her, and she wondered if the grief belonged to her or to Tull.

  Am I grieving for my dead brothers, Ayuvah and Little Chaa? she wondered.

  Fava’s head and whole body ached as if someone had pummeled her, or as if a fever wracked her.

  Chaa slipped the chain off the Cage of Bones, threw the door open, and dragged Tull out.

  Fava clutched Tull’s waist and cried. Chaa said softly, “He is not here.” Chaa pointed to Tull’s body. Then he nodded up toward the sun. “Pawethwa, Fava.” Call his name, Generous.

  Fava gaped at her father, and a powerful earthquake struck hard. The hill of bones beneath them felt as if it were rolling. Fava had never practiced the women’s magic, but she understood: “Summon him, Fava.”

  Tull had made Spirit Walkers of them all.

  Fava knew how to connect.

  And then she felt something in her womb—the first stirring, the first fluttering movements of her child. Its body was preparing to open, to accept a spirit.

  Fava heard a building collapse in the distance, and hundreds of people cried out in dismay. She did not turn to look. She closed her eyes, closed her ears, and stilled her breathing.

  She held Tull’s cooling hand. His body was so far gone, she did not know if Tull could ever reenter it.

  But she imagined another way to save him, if he needed it. She could hold onto him.

  She sat on the swaying hill, and felt more than saw the Land of Shapes. She could sense Tull, in the distance, drawing away.

  She sent a single tendril from the lightning of her soul out to him, grasped a single tendril of his lightning and drew it to her.

  “Now you shall Spirit Walk my life,” she whispered, and she forced the lightning of his soul to dance across the small black pit at her core.

  Tull was not a full-blooded Pwi. He could not feel as deeply as she could. He could never love as completely as Fava did. He could not understand how alone she would be without him. He could not understand how much she needed him. There is more to life than he knew.

  She considered her wedding day, the lust she had felt in bed with him, the love that had carried her across a continent into the land of Slave Lords, and her spirit whispered to him, “This was meant to be only the beginning of my love for you.…”

  ***

  Chapter 36: Looking to Heaven

  The following summer, Mahkawn felt nervous taking his trip down to Smilodon Bay alone. The serpents had become thick in the sea, and some in the north were larger than serpents of the past and did not willingly let men sail the oceans.

  Pirazha had warned him against traveling by ship. The white snakes had died off and the blood eaters had nearly all been disposed of, so she wanted him to go by land. She thought it was the safer course. But Mahkawn argued for a trip by water.

  “I’m not so afraid of the serpents,” Mahkawn said. “I am more afraid that the people in Smilodon Bay will not accept me.”

  Pirazha had smiled a
nd clasped her arms around Mahkawn’s thick neck. “We are all Pwi, are we not? You are family. Of course they will accept you!”

  Mahkawn nodded, but in his heart he did not feel right.

  He had ordered the deaths of so many people in Smilodon Bay, and he could not imagine that the townsfolk would forgive him.

  For others, some things seemed so easy: They could touch the peace at the center of themselves and cradle there. Yet it was not so for Mahkawn. Even having learned the Path of the Crushed Heart, he could not always reach that destination.

  Like many of the former Blade Kin, he now thought of himself as a Pwi, but he did not feel he deserved to be called that by others.

  Still, he sailed his small boat down to Smilodon Bay, and as he turned inland at Widow’s Rock, in the screams of gulls and the crashing waves of the breakers Mahkawn could still hear the tumult of voices as they had sounded that night, after a whole world took its Spirit Walk and then tried to cope with the pain and rage and passion and peace that had all been coiled in one man.

  Mahkawn sailed up the fjord through an avenue of redwoods that stood tall on each side of the water and he felt small and insignificant among them.

  When he neared town, it seemed minuscule in comparison to Bashevgo. In the past year some people had built a few rough houses. Others lived in tents. The large dock was intact, and a cooking fire rose from the inn that was still under construction on the side of the hill.

  When his boat sailed into the harbor, dozens of people came down to meet him. The thin Neanderthal Vo-olai came with her husband Anorath and her three children. Chaa and Zhopila brought their daughters. The innkeeper Theron Scandal came down himself and tried to hawk a dinner and a night’s lodging.

  Mahkawn thanked him, willing to pay well.

  Last of all, Phylomon the Starfarer came down from the human part of town, pale and seemingly young, with a long full beard and cascading hair. He walked with Darrissea, whose belly had swollen with child.

  Mahkawn had not seen them in months—not since they had returned to Bashevgo after leveling the island of the Creators. Even then, Mahkawn had not met them formally, for he had just been one spectator in the cheering throng.

  It was an odd, uncomfortable meeting. They all knew each other through Tull’s eyes, all recalled what they had been before.

  In some ways Mahkawn believed he had not changed enough, and he felt that he deserved others’ scorn. Yet they treated him as a brother, hugging him, welcoming him, but it was Chaa who said, “You did not come to see us, did you?”

  Mahkawn looked away to the hillside where Tull’s lonely house stood, apart from all others. Smoke rose from its chimney.

  “No, I came to make what peace I could,” he said. He got back into the boat and pulled out two bundles.

  They held some clothes, some tools, an old bottle of vanilla-water perfume, a brass globe, a sword made of Benbow glass—most of the things that Mahkawn had taken from that house more than a year before.

  “Go on up,” Chaa said. “You will be welcome.”

  Mahkawn carried the bundle up to the house.

  He thought, I imagined when I took Tull captive that someday I might give him back his life, but now I will never get free from my debt to him.

  He carried the gifts up the old dirt road, alongside plots covered with weeds and ashes where houses had once been. Yet most of the gardens along the way had already been planted early in the spring. The corn and sunflowers were surprisingly tall and thriving.

  Mahkawn called at the door, in the manner of the Pwi, “I am here. Is anyone in?”

  Fava answered the door, and her eyes shone to see him as if he were a lost brother.

  “Come, friend, come!” She spoke in Pwi, and Mahkawn blushed to see her. He recalled what it had been like with her as Tull, sleeping between her legs, the hot passion of nights together, and he felt as if he were a voyeur.

  He could not help but look upon her and think of her as a sweet, capable, enchanting woman, a woman he would want to spend his life with. She was modestly dressed in buckskins and a green tunic.

  “I brought you a few things,” Mahkawn said.

  Fava glanced at the bundles and grew misty-eyed. “Come in,” She urged, and Mahkawn entered, feeling clumsy and out of place.

  “Scandal invited me to stay at the inn tonight,” Mahkawn said. “I look—”

  He spotted a baby on the floor in the corner, a boy with red hair and fierce eyes. The child was bouncing on its stomach. “Yours and Tull’s?”

  “Yes …” Fava said.

  Mahkawn tried to fill the silence. “I look forward to dinner at Scandal’s. The kwea is good there. I suppose I should get over there soon.”

  “Aren’t you going to wait for Tull?” Fava asked. “He took Wayan hunting. They should be back soon.”

  “I … I would like to speak to him,” Mahkawn answered. “If he is well.…”

  “Please. You must stay, then. He’s quite well.”

  Mahkawn sat and smiled nervously, and they chatted casually about the weather and the crops. Long after nightfall, Tull brought Wayan home. They had bagged only a pair of large grouse for their day of hunting.

  Tull seemed genuinely pleased to see Mahkawn.

  The symbiote that Chaa had taken from the worm had grown and now it covered Tull completely. He stood hairless and blue, not even a thin eyebrow. He was the pale blue of a robin’s egg, as Phylomon had once been.

  This is the man I hoped to civilize, Mahkawn thought. And now he has civilized me.

  Tull treated him cordially, even kindly. After an hour talking of inconsequential things, Tull said, “I thank you for bringing our things yet … Why are you really here?”

  Mahkawn hung his head in embarrassment. “I am getting married to an old friend. Zhofwa, the goddess of love, has blown her kisses on us, and I hoped that you would … stand as witness—where my father would have stood if he were still alive.”

  For a long moment Tull did not speak, and Mahkawn worried. He suspected that Tull would not understand how important this was to him. He suspected that Tull would not know that even now it was hard for Mahkawn, a past Blade Kin, to give himself to a woman without some sense of embarrassment.

  If Tull had never taught him better, Mahkawn would have died without ever telling Pirazha that he loved her.

  “I would be proud to come to your wedding.” Tull said, his voice choked with emotion, and Fava leapt up and hugged Mahkawn in giddy excitement.

  “Please,” Mahkawn said, “I would not make you come so far. I will bring the wedding here. And if you people don’t mind, my wife and children and I would like to stay and settle.”

  Tull nodded, and smiled. “You will be welcome neighbors.”

  They talked long into the night until both Wayan and the baby passed out asleep on the floor, and Thor rose in the autumn sky wearing its autumn colors of cinnamon and mauve.

  Mahkawn climbed to his feet, preparing to leave, but found himself hesitant, and realized that he dawdled because he felt a deep sadness.

  Something had changed. Something was lost.

  Indeed, a whole way of life had been lost. The Slave Lords were gone, and the Blade Kin disbanded. The earthquakes of the previous spring had touched off dozens of volcanoes all along the White Mountains, and many buildings in Bashevgo and Greenstone had fallen.

  It had taken most of the year for Mahkawn’s men to track down the last of the blood eaters out in the wilderness. But all in all, his people were coping. People could rebuild. Mahkawn looked at Fava, realized just how much they had lost.

  “What will you two do, when Fava grows old?” he asked. He dared not add the words, What will you do when she dies?

  Fava shrugged shyly. “I do not begrudge Tull his symbiote. It is all that let him come back to me in the end. Without it …”

  Tull wrapped his arm around Fava playfully. “I am not worried,” he said, and he flipped up Fava’s tunic exposing her belly. A swath of c
rimson flashed in the firelight.

  Fava pushed his hand away. “A gift from a friend,” she said, obviously shy. Mahkawn felt only happiness for them, no jealousy.

  He hugged them both, said his goodbyes.

  Tull and Fava escorted Mahkawn to the door, and as they stepped out under the stars, they all raised their heads as one.

  It is odd, Mahkawn thought, how much Tull’s mannerisms have become part of us all. So often now Mahkawn found that even in crowds he would watch people do that, mimic Tull’s movements.

  Yet they could not resist the impulse to look up into the night sky, at the endless stars and the empty paths where the red drones had once barred their way to the heavens.

  Okanjara, Mahkawn thought, I am free!

  ***

  About Path of the Crushed Heart

  At the end of book one in this series, I told how I decided to write a fantasy with science fiction elements. It’s a tough task. So many science fiction readers want only “pure” science fiction, without supernatural trappings.

  I understand their qualms. You see, when you mix science fiction and fantasy, you risk breaking a cardinal rule of “wonder” writing. You try to introduce too many wonders, so that the readers feel that the book lacks credibility.

  So you walk a tight line, and depending upon the reader, they may feel that you’ve strayed too far toward the science fiction element, or too far toward the fantasy.

  This series began as a meditation on some things. In the opening two books, I drew upon a number of things for my inspiration: my childhood love of dinosaurs and cavemen, my own abuse at the hands of my father along with the abuse that I witnessed of other children in our neighborhood, my dissatisfaction with the world we live in, the poetry of Theodore Roethke and myself.

  I have to say that there was much more than that. Very often I look at brutality in the world, as shown by ruthless regimes, by terrorists, by dictators living in small countries around the world, and by the little thugs that reign even in just about every little town’s city council, and sometimes I feel overwhelmed.