by Ken Altabef
Qo’tirgin was still irritated. “What then? What?”
“You’ll see. You’ll see. I’ve an important role for you to play Qo’tirgin. You should travel south as far as you can to the warmer climes and stand ready.”
“And me?” asked Kaokortok eagerly. “Is there a part in this for me?”
“Oh, I hope not,” said Nunavik.
“Yes, there is a part in the chain for you Kaokortok,” Alaana reassured him. “An important part.”
“Don’t let him do anything important,” warned Nunavik. “He will surely screw it up.”
“Oh I’m not worried,” said Alaana, “because you’ll be right there to watch over him. Qo’tirgin, Kaokortok and Nunavik all in a row. And I’ll do the rest.”
“And what is it that you propose to do?” asked Qo’tirgin.
“I’m going to face Vithrok in single combat.”
“That’s impossible,” whispered Kaokortok.
“No, it’s crazy!” said Nunavik. “That’s what it is.”
“Is it crazy?” asked Alaana. “Tell me, does Vithrok ignore me as insignificant or does he fear me? It doesn’t matter, really. As it happens, my plan will work either way.”
“He’ll kill you,” said Nunavik angrily. “That’s what I think.”
“Now, now!” said Alaana. “We’ll have none of that. Look at me. Do I have any fear? Do I have any doubt?”
No one offered any answer.
“You know I don’t,” said Alaana. “I can’t. If I fail all is lost, so I shall not fail.”
She gave the others a reproachful look. “I will restore the balance, for that is what has been said of me long ago, at the very beginning, as I stood naked before the spirits. You were there, Nunavik. You heard. And this I have come to believe: there is only one person alive who can stop Vithrok, and it just happens to be me.”
From the top of the pressure ridge, Alaana had a fine view of the Anatatook settlement below. Quite a crowd had gathered to watch as she ascended the snowy ridge. The men and women of the Anatatook were all still reeling from the effects of the Yupikut raid. They had rounded up their belongings and repaired their tents, buried their dead, and quieted the children’s nightmares as best they could. Now they stood out on the plain by the fork in the river, and watched their shaman ascend the tall mound of snow. Good, she thought. Let them watch. Let them all see.
“Why didn’t we bring the drum?” asked Tikiqaq. “Don’t you want me to beat the drum?”
“No drum this time,” said Alaana.
“Then how can I call you back?”
Alaana gave her tupilaq a sad half-smile. “You won’t be calling me back this time.”
Tikiqaq began to panic. “Why not? Why not? What are you going to do?”
“This time,” said Alaana, “I am going forth in body. This time I’m going to really fly.”
Alaana wore her ceremonial parka of albino caribou skin. She carried a war-spear in her left hand. She raised her other hand, its empty palm facing the sky.
“Beneath the blue sky,
Beneath the white cloud--”
A lone figure called out as he struggled up the snowy mound. “Hold on! Now you just hold your horses, Alaana.”
It was Ben. She should have known.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” he asked. “No, don’t answer that because I already know. You’re going to the North Pole.”
Alaana nodded.
“Are you crazy, woman? Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“What I have to do.”
Ben whipped his head from side to side, looking out across the barren tundra. “What? Getting yourself killed? No one can survive at the pole. You know that.”
“I’ll be all right. I’m going to succeed.”
“Well of course I suppose you have to say that, being the shaman and everything. But I’m not buying it. This has gone too far. I won’t allow it. You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” she said sadly.
“You don’t. You don’t! Now listen to me.” He sat down beside her and took her hand. “We can go away. Remember? We talked about this. The United States. California. Louisiana. British East Asia is rebuilding Old Bea. They have supply ships running up and down the coast all the time. We can go far away from here. Leave all these spirits and ghosts to fend for themselves. Kinak can take care of himself now, and Noona is safe with Sir Gekko. It’s time to think of yourself, Alaana.”
Alaana felt her resolve tremble just a tiny bit, but it didn’t crack. She loved this man so much.
“Don’t you think I want that? More than anything, that’s the kind of life I’ve always wanted. To be a normal woman, a simple wife.”
Ben nodded. “I know. Well, there’s nothing stopping us now. These ghosts or turgats or whatever — they won’t follow you to the States. We don’t have polar bears or caribou or shamans there. No one’s even heard of a shaman there. You’ll be free. We’ll be free.”
“I only wish that were true, Ben. I really do. But it’s not only Nunatsiaq in danger now. I don’t know all about locomotives, or jambalaya, or a warm bath in a brass bathtub, or any of the other things, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same sun that shines on Louisiana. If we don’t stop him, there won’t be any United States. There won’t be any Louisiana. There won’t be anything.”
“But why do you have to--”
She drew her hand from between his fingers and placed it over his. “I’m the only one that can.”
Ben looked her in the eye for what seemed an eternity. She didn’t know what he was searching for, deep within her soul. That man, she’d learned, had a kind of spirit-vision all his own where she was concerned. He knew her better than any other person ever could or ever would.
He smiled a very sad smile. “I guess it was always going to come to this, wasn’t it?”
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it..
At last he bowed his head and said, “I’ll see you when you get back.”
He retraced his steps down the slope to rejoin the others. He turned back. “There’s just one other thing I want to know. How the heck do you think you’re going to get to the pole?”
“Watch me.”
Alaana took a deep, cleansing breath and lowered her head.
“Beneath the blue sky,
Beneath the white cloud
Keeper of the echo in the high mountains,
Keeper of the winds across the wide sea,
Master of the wild wind,
Come to me.”
A gentle breeze began to whip up from the east.
“Great spirit,” said Alaana. “I beg of you! Come to me!”
Then Sila came in earnest, bringing a cyclone of swirling air to surround the Anatatook shaman. Despite the circumstances, Alaana felt a small pang of satisfaction. In all her life, including the ten years she had called this spirit her guardian, this was the first time Sila had ever answered her call.
She stood tall, arms spread wide, and let Sila take her up.
The exhilaration of bodily flight was the same as she remembered, for on the night of her initiation Sila had also swept her up in a raging torrent of wind and snow. With fingers made of air, The Walker In The Wind took his charge into his unseen hands. Alaana felt Sila fold down over her as a protective blanket, keeping her safe and warm amid the chill cyclone that bore her away.
Carried once again on Sila’s wings, Alaana flew across the tundra, heading due north. She marveled at the full expanse of Nunatsiaq as it sped past beneath her. She gripped the spear firmly, and closed her eyes.
“Thank you, Great Sila,” she said.
The wind spirit deposited her gently upon the ice at the top of the world, and then quietly blew away.
The intense cold of the far north did not touch Alaana’s skin, however. Nor did it freeze the life in her lungs or turn her eyeballs to glass. Far to the south Qo’tirgin had sparked the tumo, the trance state that generates warmth, u
sed by shamans on their long sojourns into the wild. Qo’tirgin generated the heat, which he drew from the air about him in the southern climes, and transmitted it to Kaokortok and then Nunavik. The string of shamans passed the warmth along, and Alaana did not feel the cold.
In addition to providing a warming touch to her frostbitten skin, the good will of her friends sustained her.
“How do you feel?” asked Nunavik. Since he was right next to Alaana in the chain of warmth, the golden walrus was able to communicate directly.
“Like I was meant to be here.”
“Good,” replied the golden walrus. “Good. But how in the seven worlds are you going to get in?”
Alaana had never seen the Tunrit citadel before, and in fact, she couldn’t see it even now except as a dark shadow. The huge structure, from base to spire, was encased in an impenetrable sheath of solid ice.
CHAPTER 44
END GAME
“There’s no way in,” remarked Nunavik.
Alaana walked a little way around the citadel, but it was clear the massive barrier of ice extended in every direction. Its surface glistened with reflected sunlight. Far beneath, where the hand of man could never reach, the black rock of the Tunrit structure sat like a gigantic spider locked in a sea of solid ice.
“There has to be a way,” she said. If she couldn’t get in, all was lost.
“Well, of course,” said Nunavik, “there’s the obvious way. Ungarpaluk, my precious little harpoon, you are as blunt as ever. Just step out of your body and pass through in spirit. No barrier of ice can hinder a naked spirit-woman.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? We’ll keep your body warm for you out here, don’t worry.”
“It’s just not part of the plan.”
“Why not? What is this plan?”
“That’s not for you to know.”
“Not for me to know?” barked the walrus. “Who am I after all? I’m nobody. I haven’t lived twelve hundred years, I haven’t been your nursemaid in the Way since you were a doe-eyed little child, I haven’t rescued you time and time again from every idiotic situation you’ve ever managed to get yourself into…”
“Shhh!” said Alaana. “You’ll ruin the plan.”
“Some plan. You can’t even get inside the door.”
Alaana continued to stare at the ice-capped citadel. Perhaps it hadn’t been very much of a plan after all, but that didn’t mean it still couldn’t work. She refused to believe that it was over.
A flare of yellow light in the sky drew her attention. One of the stars, a very large one by the look of it, was moving. Its bright flash of motion was clearly outlined against the daylit sky as it began tumbling rapidly toward the earth.
The shooting star streaked groundward, heading directly for Alaana’s position. She watched it come.
The ball of energy struck hard, blasting the ice cover in a wild spray of powder. A pair of luminous figures hit the earth, rolled, and then without hesitation, shot up to their feet. They were two spirit-men, though much taller and broader at the shoulder than Alaana. Dressed in bulky spirit-furs, these men had the oversized heads, the heavy, ponderous brows and the finely chiseled features of the Tunrit.
“It just gets worse and worse,” squawked Nunavik.
Alaana tightened her grip on the war-spear.
One of the Tunrit souls raised both his hands in supplication. “Hold, shaman of the Anatatook. Hold. We are not your enemies.”
Alaana was glad to hear it.
The ancient shaman paused for a moment as if he need catch his breath. His light flickered weakly, then he continued, “I am Tugto. I stand… powerless before you, as you can see. My guardian spirit… Punnik, Steadfast Lord of the Mamut, is long gone from this world. And my friend’s light… grows dim as well.”
“I am Oogloon,” said the other. “We were the Sighted Ones in this world’s earliest time. I was considered the least among them because I did not even possess the full spirit-sight. The only soul light that I could ever see was the spirit of the snow.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It was enough to get by.”
“I am Alaana of the Anatatook people, but it looks like you already know that. Why have you come down from your rest?”
“We are old,” said Tugto, “older than anything… you can imagine. Down along the many, many years, we, as the other grandfathers in the sky, were content to watch. What else could we do? We had lived our lives already. Our time had passed. Before the Tunrit left this world completely, we provided for those who came after.”
“Your legacy had been well appreciated,” said Alaana, thinking of the stone fishing weirs and the hunting techniques passed down from the ages. “The Tunrit are remembered very highly among all the people of Nunatsiaq.”
“Legacy,” said Oogloon. “We left a dark legacy as well, locked away in a soul cage beneath the Ring of Stones.”
“In recent years we watched this menace grow,” said Tugto, “but we were powerless to do anything against it. Even now, we totter on the brink of nonexistence.” He picked at his spirit-furs, which Alaana recognized as the thick skins of the mammoth, which now appeared frail and insubstantial.
“You can help?” Alaana asked.
Oogloon’s spirit-man smiled, showing a perfect line of brilliant white teeth. “My guardian spirit is Brother Snow.”
Alaana glanced toward the wall of ice. “No shaman can make Brother Snow do anything.”
“No shaman can,” Oogloon agreed. “But I can ask. Brother Snow is a friend to me.”
Oogloon’s eyes rolled to the top of his head and he began to intone secret words in a low voice. This was a language Alaana had never heard before. Perhaps it was unique to the Tunrit, or perhaps it was the language of the snow. After a few moments Oogloon’s spirit-man flared with a dull purple light. Alaana recognized the hue as the same color that imbued the snow and ice all along the vast tundra. Alaana had looked upon that color every day of her life ever since she had acquired the second sight of the shaman. But she had never seen it concentrated in one place as it was now, completely filling up the figure of the ancient Tunrit. So rich and vibrant. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.
Oogloon extended his hands toward the immensity of the Tunrit citadel. The snow and ice, graceful and silent as ever, began to dissolve into the misty air. Without the slightest fanfare or even any sound at all, the icy shield simply crumbled into tiny flakes and drifted away.
The Tunrit citadel lay exposed. The shiny black basalt, cleansed by the departing snow, glittered once again as if brand new. Alaana marveled at its construction, the massive blocks locked seamlessly into place, the tall spires and delicately carved cornices. It seemed to her this building embodied the hopes and dreams of the entire Tunrit race, who had cut and dragged the volcanic rock to this place over endless stretches of tundra and assembled them here with a degree of craftsmanship long lost to this world, in hopes of some lofty purpose. Now those dreams were forgotten, that purpose corrupted.
Oogloon stumbled and fell. The purple light of Brother Snow had left him pale and nearly translucent. “That’s all I can do,” he said.
“Thank you,” Alaana said to the Tunrit shamans. “I am very glad to call you my brothers. Please wait out here.”
She stepped toward the titanic archway that marked the front gate of the citadel. She went in alone.
The interior of the citadel was like nothing Alaana could ever have imagined. It seemed there were several different citadels superimposed over each other. The first was built of volcanic rock, the impressive corridors and vaulted archways which rose tall and solid, as they had stood for eons uncounted.
The second was a spiritual overlay which filled the whole structure. Vithrok’s inua had become the citadel to a certain extent. Alaana could feel the sorcerer’s touch imbuing each stone. The sorcerer’s will strained at the task, as it sought to use the cage of rock to contain a third, different version of the citade
l. The third was a raging torrent of pure Beforetime, whose rampant spirit defied containment.
Alaana hadn’t taken more than a handful of steps down the corridor, before she was knocked to the ground by the effects of the Beforetime. A frenzied clash of colors blinded her. Every shade of yellow and green, flashing and strobing, and blues and purple and every other quality of light, assaulted her eyes at once. The sounds were sharp and esoteric, the bleating of gutted sheep, the growl of a crocodile, a spirited discussion among crickets, the raging music of the spheres. She slammed her hands to her ears to shut out their voices but that did no good, they were speaking directly to her soul. The riotous varieties of scent that attacked her nose were impossible to identify or describe.
Completely overwhelmed, she collapsed onto the smooth marble floor.
The incredible visions overpowered her second sight, rendering her blind with their excesses. In the mixed-up babble of sound she couldn’t hear herself think. The jumbled rush of senseless sensation was enough to drive her mad. She couldn’t move forward; she couldn’t go back. All was surely lost.
Madness beckoned, and then suddenly it was all gone. Alaana saw only the hard black rock in front of her face; she heard nothing. She smelled only the bitter reek of her own fearful sweat. The second sight was gone.
Tsungi had left her.
Alaana lay sprawled across the floor of the Tunrit citadel at the northernmost pole of the world, returned to a state she had not known for over thirty-five years. She was once again an ordinary woman.
The loss was devastating. Alaana felt as if she was only a fraction of what she had been before. The strength of her spirit guardian, a mystical energy that had flowed through her veins all of her adult life, was gone. She struggled shakily to her feet. She was a shaman no longer.
I never was a shaman, she thought to herself. I never was a real shaman.
Alaana had no time to lament on all she had so suddenly lost. She had to defeat Vithrok. The power of the sorcerer was surely immense, Alaana thought, considering the way his spirit filled the entire citadel, the way it fought to restrain the raging Beforetime and was even now keeping it in check. She felt very small in the face of such awesome strength. What was one lone woman against that? Still, she was here, and she must try.