The Skrayling Tree

by Michael Moorcock

  The metal was black through and through. As the youth wielded his lance with expert skill, it began to murmur and scream. Red inscriptions flickered angrily at its heart. I was oddly cheered. Surely where that blade sang, Ulric must be near!

  I had found the black blade, though I had not sought it. I could see Klosterheim grinning in anticipated triumph. For him, the blade was not nearly as important as the cup his people called the Gradel. Klosterheim wanted the thing for his own ambitions. If he took it back to Satan, he was certain he would be restored in his master’s eyes. The central irony was that Satan himself sought reconciliation with God. It was as if our danger were so great that the time had come for the two to bury their differences.

  Yet it was impossible for Klosterheim to work for the common good. The gaining of the Grail must be by his achievement, I knew, or he would see no respect in his master’s eyes. This complicated and contradictory relationship with the Prince of the Morning was, to be frank, somewhat beyond my powers of perception.

  White Crow had not seen all the Pukawatchi. A third war party had swept up from a bend in the river. There must have been another forty of the pygmies, all armed with bows. They had walked across the river bottom, like beavers, and had emerged immediately behind us. Our only advantage was that the bows were not especially powerful, and the pygmies were not expert shots.

  While we covered him, White Crow repacked Bes’s saddle, adjusting straps and other harness until he was satisfied that all was secure. The canoe would now act to guard our backs.

  I kept the new party at a distance with my bow. Their own arrows could be shot back, but not with any great power as they were too short. Ayanawatta’s arrows, however, were perfect. Slender and long, they were a joy to use. They were so accurate that they might have been charmed. But there were not enough. Fewer and fewer were being shot back by the Pukawatchi. Slowly they were closing the circle.

  White Crow adjusted the copper mesh protecting Bes’s front and head. She kneeled for us.

  White Crow shouted for us to get onto the mammoth, and we scrambled into that massive saddle. We pushed the maddened pygmies back with our bowstaves. Ayanawatta was the last to come up, his twin war clubs cracking skulls and bones so rapidly that it sounded like the popping of a hot fire made with damp wood. He worked with astonishing skill and delicacy, knowing exactly which part of each club would land where. Those dense skulls were hard to crack, but he fought to kill. Each single blow economically took a life. When Bes moved away from the tumbled corpses towards the pygmy archers, they scattered back.

  The remains of Klosterheim’s band continued to stalk in our wake, but they, too, had few arrows left. They followed like coyotes tracking a cougar, as if they hoped we would lead them to fresh meat.

  Their numbers were now badly reduced. They must have been debating the wisdom of continuing with this war party. Klosterheim had not delivered what he had promised them. The Two Tongues probably had some self-interest in leaguing himself with my husband’s old enemy. If he had expected Klosterheim to know how to defeat us, he had been disappointed.

  I was surprised when they began to drop back. They were soon far behind us. No doubt they were discussing fresh strategies. Klosterheim would, for his part, insist on the pursuit. I understood him well enough to know that.

  The woodlands were sparser now, breaking into isolated thickets as the undulating grasslands opened up before us. Huge mountains dominated the distant landscape. The pygmies were among the grasses and wild corn. The smoke we saw behind us showed that at least some of them had made camp. White Crow remained suspicious. He said it was an old trick of theirs to leave one man making smoke while the rest continued in pursuit. After studying it for a while though, he decided most of the Pukawatchi were there preparing food. He could tell by the quality of the smoke that they had made a good kill. This would be the message any stragglers would see, and it would bring them into the camp.

  Ayanawatta said the Pukawatchi were a civilized people and would feel shame if they ate their meat raw. The fire told of a beast serving the whole party. While this was not a deliberate message, the Pukawatchi would know how friend and enemy alike would read it. They had called off hunting us, at least for the moment.

  “And a big deer will fill a lot of little stomachs!” Ayanawatta laughed.

  I asked him if there were many people of Pukawatchi height, and he seemed surprised at my question. “In their own lands, all is to their stature. Even their monsters are smaller!”

  “That is what made it both easy and hard for me,” chimed in White Crow. “I was easy to see but hard to kill!”

  The Pukawatchi were cliff dwellers from the southwest living in sophisticated cave-towns. Most of their civic life was conducted inside. When he had visited Ipkeptemi the Wise, their greatest medicine chief, White Crow had experienced some difficulty crawling through the city’s smaller tunnels.

  “And did you steal their treasures?” I asked. I had, of course, a specific interest in the black blade.

  “I am charged to bring important medicine back to the Kakatanawa. Only I can handle the metal, since they lost their previous White Crow.”

  “Who was their previous White Crow man?” I asked almost hesitantly. I could not help fearing this road of inquiry would take me somewhere I did not want to go.

  His answer was not the one I had anticipated.

  “My father,” he said.

  “And his name?” I asked.

  White Crow looked at me in some surprise. “That is still his own,” he said.

  I had offended some protocol and fell silent by way of apology. In this strange world where dream-logic must be followed or consign you forever to limbo I swam again in familiar supernatural waters, ready for all experience. Old disciplines returned. I was prepared to make the most of what I could. Even the most dedicated adventurers accepted how form and ritual were essential to this life. A game of cards depends upon chance, but can only be played if strict rules are followed.

  We played the ball game that evening after we had made early camp. It was a form of backgammon but required more memory and skill. Such games were cultivated by Ayanawatta’s people, he said. Those who played them well had special status and a name. They were called wabenosee or, more humorously, sheshe-buwak, which meant ‘ducks’ and was also the nickname for the balls used in their game.

  “Presumably we are at the mercy of fate, like the rattling balls,” I said. “Do we control anything? Do we not merely maintain the status quo as best we can?”

  Ayanawatta was not sure. “I envy you your skills, Countess Oona. I still yearn to walk the white path between the realms, but until now my dream-journeys, dangerous and enlightening as they have been, have been accomplished by other means.”

  He did not know if I was any more or less at the mercy of fate than himself. He longed to make just one such walk, he said, before his spirit passed into its next state.

  I laughed and made an easy promise. “If I ever can, I’ll take you,” I said. “Every sentient creature should look once upon the constantly weaving and separating moonbeam roads.” The women of my kind, of course, constantly crossed and recrossed them. And in our actions, in the stories we played out, we wove the web and woof of the multiverse, the fabric of time and space. From the original matter, acted upon by our dreams and desires, by our stories, came the substance and structure of the whole.

  “Divine simplicity,” I said. With it came the full understanding of one’s value as an individual, the understanding that every action taken in the common cause is an action taken for oneself and vice versa. “The moonbeam roads are at once the subtlest and easiest of routes. Sometimes I feel almost guilty at the ease with which I move between the realms.” All other adepts hoped to achieve the ability, natural to dreamthieves and free dream-travelers, of walking between the worlds. Our unconscious skills made us powerful, and they made us dangerous but also highly endangered, especially when the likes of Gaynor chose to challen
ge the very core of belief upon which all our other realities depended.

  “The path is not always easy and not always straight,” I told him. “Sometimes it takes the whole of one’s life to walk quite a short distance. Sometimes all you do is return to where you began.”

  “Circumstances determine action? Context defines?” Grinning, White Crow made several quick movements with his fingers. Balls rattled and danced like planets for a moment and then were still. He had won the game. “Is that what you learned at your musram?” And he darted me a quick, sardonic look, to show me that he could use more than one vocabulary if he wished. Most of us know several symbolic languages, which affords us few problems with the logic and sound of spoken language. We are equally alert to the language of street and forest. We are often scarcely aware which language we use, and it never takes us long to learn a new one. These skills are primitive compared to our monstrous talent for manipulating the natural world, which makes shape-taking almost second nature. Quietly, however, White Crow was reminding me that he, too, was an adept.

  “To wander the paths between the worlds at will,” he said, “is not the destiny of a Kakatanawa White Crow man.”

  Ayanawatta lit a pipe. White Crow refused it, making an excuse. “We need have no great fear of the Pukawatchi now, but it would be wise to keep guard. I go forward to seek an old friend and hope to be with you in the morning. If I am not, continue as we are going, towards the mountains. You will find me.”

  And then, swiftly, he disappeared into the night.

  We smoked and talked for a little longer. Ayanawatta had had dealings with the pygmies. They had skills and knowledge denied to most and were fair traders, if hard bargainers. When I told him that Klosterheim had been the same size as me when I last saw him, Ayanawatta smiled and nodded as if this were familiar enough. “I told you,” he said, “we are living in that kind of time.”

  Did he know why Klosterheim was now the size of a Pukawatchi? He shook his head. White Crow might know. The dwarves and the giants were leaving their ordained realms. But he and others like him had begun the process, by exploring into those realms. He, after all, had broken the rules, as had White Crow, long before the Pukawatchi began to move north. The dwarves had always lived at peace with those from the other two realms, each with its own hunting grounds. All he knew now was that the closer to the sacred oak one came, the closer the realms conjoined.

  I had been taught that the multiverse had no center, just as an animal or a tree had no center. Yet if the multiverse had a soul, that was what Ayanawatta seemed to be describing. If the multiplicity of everything was symbolized in a living metaphor, there was no reason the multiverse should not possess a soul. I went to unroll my buffalo robe and wrap myself against the cold.

  Ayanawatta was enjoying his pipe more than usual. He lay on his side, staring up at a three-quarter moon over which thin, white clouds floated on a steady breeze from the south. He wore his soft buckskin shirt against the cold. It was of very fine workmanship, decorated with semiprecious beads and dyed porcupine quills, like the leggings and the fur-trimmed cap he also pulled on against the night’s chill. Again I had the impression of a well-to-do Victorian gentleman adventurer making the best of the wilderness.

  He had already removed and stored his eagle feathers in a hollow tube he carried for the purpose, but he still wore his long earrings and studs. His elaborate tattoos did nothing but enhance his refined, sensitive features. He took a deep pull from the pipe before handing me the bowl into which I placed my own reed to draw up the smoke. “What if that tree-soul which the Kakatanawa guard were the sum of all our souls?”

  I agreed that this was a philosophical possibility.

  “What if the sum of all our souls was the price we paid should that tree die?” he continued significantly.

  I drew the mixture into my lungs. I tasted mint, rosemary, willow, sage. I inhaled a herb garden and forest combined! Unlike tobacco, this spread lightness and well-being through my whole body. “Is that what we are fighting for?” I asked, handing him back the bowl.

  He sighed. “I think it is. When Law goes mad and Chaos is the Balance’s only defense, some believe we are already conquered.”

  “You do not agree?”

  “Of course not. I have made my spirit-quest into my future. I understand how I must play my part in restoring the Balance. I studied for four years and in four realms. I learned how to dream of my own future and summon for myself both flesh and form. I have read my own story in the books of the horse-people. I have heard my story called a false one. But if I give it life, I will redeem it. I will respect the people it sought to celebrate. I will bring respect to both the singer and the song.”

  He took another long, delicious pull on the pipe. He was gravely determined. “I know what I must do to fulfill my spiritual destiny. I must live my story as it is written. Our rituals are the rituals of order. I am working to give credible power back to Law and to fight those forces which would disrupt the Balance forever. Like you, I serve neither Law nor Chaos. I am, in the eyes of a mukhamirim, a Knight of the Balance.” He let the smoke from his lungs pour out to join that of our small fire, curling gracefully towards the moon. “I have that lust for harmony, unity and justice which consumes so many of us.”

  The firelight caught his gold and copper, reflected in his glowing skin, drew contrasting shadows. I was, in spite of myself, enormously attracted to him, but I did not fear the attraction. Both of us had been well schooled in self-control.

  “It is sometimes hard to know,” I said, “where to place one’s loyalty …”

  He experienced no such ambiguities. He had taken his dream journey. “My story is already written. I have read it, after all. Now I must follow it. That is the price you pay for such a vision. I know what I must do to make sure the story comes true in every possible realm of the multiverse. Thus I’ll achieve that ultimate harmony we all desire more than life or death!”

  Feeling overwhelmed by my own thoughts, I again took the first watch, listening with an attention which had once been habitual. But I was certain Klosterheim and his pygmies were not out there.

  I was ready for sleep when I woke Ayanawatta to take his watch. He settled himself comfortably against Bes’s gently rising and falling chest and filled another pipe. For all his appearance of indolence, I knew that every sense was alert. He had the air of all true outdoors folk, of being as securely comfortable in that vast wilderness under the moon and stars as another might be in the luxury of an urban living room.

  The last thing I saw before I went to sleep was that broad, reassuring face, its tattoos telling the tale of his life journey, staring contentedly at the sky, confident of his ability to live up to everything his dream demanded of him.

  In the morning Bes was restless. We washed and ate rapidly and were soon mounted again. We let the mammoth take her own course, since she evidently had a better idea than we where to find her master.

  The only weapon White Crow had taken was his black-bladed lance.

  I feared for him. “He might have been overwhelmed by the pygmies.”

  Ayanawatta was unworried. “With those senses of his, he can hear anything coming. But there is always the chance he’s met with an accident. If so, he is not far from here. Bes can find him if we cannot.”

  By noon we had yet to see a sign of White Crow. Bes kept moving steadily towards the mountains, following the gentle curves of the landscape. Sometimes we could see for miles across the rolling drumlins. At other times we traveled through shallow valleys. Occasionally Bes paused, lifting her wide, curving tusks against the sky, her relatively small ears moving to follow a sound. Satisfied, she would then move on.

  It was close to evening before Bes slowly brought her massive body to a halt and began to scent at the air with her trunk. Made long and dark by the sun, our shadows followed us like gigantic ghosts.

  Once more Bes’s ears waved back and forth. She seemed to hear something she had been hoping f
or and strained towards the source of the sound. We, of course, let her have her head. She began to move gradually to the east, to our right, slowly picking up speed until she was striding across the prairie at what amounted to a canter.

  In the distance now I heard a strange mixture of noises. Something between the honking of geese and the hissing of snakes, mixed with a gurgling rumble which sounded like the first eruptions of a volcano.

  All of a sudden White Crow appeared before us, waving his lance in triumph, grinning and shouting.

  “I’ve found him again! Quickly, let’s not lose him.” He began running beside the mammoth, keeping easy pace with her.

  I heard the noise again, but louder. I caught a sweet, familiar smell as we crested a broad, sweeping hill. Setting behind the mountains, the sun turned the whole scene blood red. And there we saw White Crow’s intended prey.

  The size of a three-story building, its brilliant feathered ruff was flaming with a thousand hues in that deepening light. I had never seen so much color on one animal. Dazzling peacock feathers blazed purple, scarlet and gold, emerald and ruby and sapphire. Such beautiful plumage was the finery of a creature whose nightmare features should have disappeared from the Earth countless millions of years before. Its brown-black beak looked as if it had been carved from a gigantic block of mahogany. Above the beak two terrible brilliant yellow eyes glared, each the size of a dressing mirror. The mouth snapped and clacked, streaming with pale green saliva. As we watched, the thing lifted a yelping prairie fox in its right front claw and stuffed it into its maw, gagging as it swallowed.

  The creature had a hungry, half-crazed look to it. It stretched its long neck down to the ground and sniffed, as if hoping to find food it had overlooked. It then stood upright on massive back feet which had a somewhat birdlike appearance, though its forepaws more closely resembled lizard claws.

  Any one of the reptile’s neck feathers, erect now as he sensed our presence, was the height of a tall man and layered in rich reds, yellows, purples and greens. Ulric would have called it a dinosaur, but to me it was a cross between a huge bird and a giant lizard, its feathered tail train being by far its longest part. Clearly it was a link with the dinosaur ancestors of our modern birds.