Chapter 5: The Prophet
Tull turned to see Chaa at the edge of the clearing, in the shadows. He stepped forward so that moonlight fell on him. “Are you sure we cannot win—sixty thousand Pwi of the Rough against sixty million slaves and their lords? I’ve walked the paths of the future and know what I have seen.”
Chaa strode purposefully toward the fire, stood next to Tull, raised his own ceremonial dagger and slit his wrist.
He held it up for all to see. “I swear to God, I shall free Bashevgo!”
Around the fire at Lake Perfect Mirror for a Blue Sky, a hundred half-drunk Pwi screamed in unison, cutting their wrists, so that their first war cry became a roar that echoed for miles above the trees.
Amid the excitement Tull looked for Fava. She walked quietly to a tree, hugging Wayan, without joy in her face. He went to her and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve been married only for a few days, and already you talk of leaving me?”
“I … didn’t think,” Tull said.
All around them the young Pwi shouted and beat their chests, eyes shining in the light of the fires. Old Uknai stood among them, grinning. Little Wayan clung to Fava and looked around wildly. Tull hugged them both and found that Fava was sniffling.
“I won’t go for a while,” Tull promised. “Not until summer at the earliest.”
“You won’t go at all,” Fava said, and Tull started to protest. “We’ll go together. We’ll fight as man and wife.” Fava sat with her back against a redwood, holding Wayan and singing softly. Tull wanted to argue, but knew this was not the time.
He sat with them for an hour, resting a hand on Fava’s knee. The camp quieted as the Pwi broke into small groups. Some young Pwi boys stripped and jumped into the cold lake, swimming in the darkness. Someone banged on a log, using it as a drum, and others played their shrill flutes. They sang an old Pwi song:
When I was young and hollow,
I hunted in wheat fields under starlight,
And my feet left shadows in the white fields,
And I was as empty as those shadows.
When I was young and hollow,
The girl I married had no beauty.
She was breastless and lacked front teeth,
And with her mother she ground bread dough.
Now I am no longer hollow,
For this woman fills me with beauty,
In her smile I see white fields in starlight,
And she gives me her breast as a pillow.
Chaa came, sat beside Tull on his heels. “Come with me, Tull. We have things to discuss,” he said, grabbing Tull’s forearm.
Tull tried to stand and found his right ankle numb, as often happened on cold nights. He limped off under a canopy of trees, into a deep grotto filled with trumpet shaped mushrooms. The two men sat facing each other on a carpet of musty redwood needles. The Spirit Walker leaned his head back, breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring to taste the night air.
“You are nervous tonight,” Chaa said. “Why?”
Tull considered. As Spirit Walker for the village, Chaa had traveled to the gates of death so that he could leave his body and connect his consciousness with Tull’s in a realm beyond time, and thus walk both Tull’s past and future. Nothing was hidden from Chaa. “You know what troubles me.”
Chaa laughed. “You test my skills? You hoped to wait until Phylomon and Theron Scandal returned from Craal before warning people of the dangers they face. You fear the slavers, for they gather on our borders to the west. But you fear the Creators far more.”
In the distance a young Pwi laughed on the lake and splashed water. Tull wrapped his arms around his knees. In his mind he returned to Craal, to the rocky coast at the Straits of Zerai where he, Theron Scandal, and Phylomon the Starfarer had separated. At the spawning ground of the great sea serpents they’d found serpents dead from parasites—pale lampreys with venomous mouths that fastened to the serpents’ gills.
The stinging lampreys were driving the serpents mad, till they scratched out their own gills by rubbing against submerged rocks. Only the Creators, ancient breeding machines formed by the Starfarers, could have made the parasites. Yet long ago, the human Starfarers had formed the Creators to protect the environment. The idea that the Creators would purposely sabotage such a vital species did not make sense.
But on the plains near the straits, Tull and Phylomon had also found some wild humans—half the size of normal humans—that could not speak, could not hunt or dress or fend for themselves. Instead they were animals, and it was obvious that the Creators had formed them.
Yet the Creators also sent gray birds with lampreys in their gullet to attack the children. Only then had Phylomon guessed the truth: the Creators had formed the humans so they could practice their plans for genocide. Mankind had overextended, so the Creators intended to destroy mankind, wipe them from the planet. Phylomon and Scandal had stayed at Zerai to protect the small humans, move them to safety.
“I know how to fight men,” Tull offered, “but I do not know how to fight the Creators. Phylomon says he will raise an army when he returns. But I cannot imagine that it will be easy.”
“Then it is good that we began building our army tonight,” Chaa said. “Still I do not know how to fight the Creators either.”
Tull drew a breath in surprise. He’d always imagined that a Spirit Walker would know everything.
“On my Spirit Walks, I have not seen the Creators, but I’ve connected to men who know of them. They are secretive, like great worms, and live deep in caves far to the north, but—they remain invisible to my mind. The Starfarers gave them bodies of flesh, but their brains are made of crystal. The Creators are machines. I can’t Spirit Walk their future. I can only guess their intent.”
“Phylomon believes they will destroy us if we don’t kill them,” Tull said. “What do you think?”
“They have little choice. The Creators were made to protect the land and its animals, but now the entire West is filled with people. The mammoth and woolly rhino have been hunted to oblivion beyond the White Mountains, as have other animals. For the Creators to obey the commands given by the Starfarers, they must reduce our numbers. But we have guns. If the Creators strike only to thin our numbers we would retaliate. They know that.
“No, the Creators must wash us like dirt from a bowl and start over, replace us with humans and Pwi grown from their wombs—men so ignorant that they cannot build weapons to challenge them.”
Tull sighed. “I was afraid that if I warned our people, it would cause a panic.”
“Phylomon and Scandal will return soon,” Chaa said. “Let Phylomon bear the bad news,” he looked ahead as if staring at something others could not see. “You are young, with many concerns. You fear the Creators and the Slave Lords of Craal—but if you think, you will see that you fear only one thing: the future.
“At your wedding you received many gifts, but I came to offer you one more. I offer you knowledge of the future.”
Chaa shuffled his feet and Tull thought that he would now reveal a plan to destroy the Creators. It took Tull a moment to realize that the Spirit Walker was slipping off his moccasins. Chaa extended the moccasins to Tull.
They were so black, they seemed to swallow the darkness, except for small crows sewn from silver thread that gleamed in the moonlight.
Tull lurched back, as if the moccasins were rattlesnakes. “No!”
“I want you to wear the moccasins of the Spirit Walker,” Chaa said. “The power of the shamans runs in your blood. Yet old laws require me to tell you this: once you take a Spirit Walk, you can never go home.”
Chaa offered the moccasins, but Tull would not touch them.
“I wouldn’t make a good Spirit Walker.” Tull tried to sound calm. “I’ve seen your eyes after you Spirit Walk. When you walk, you taste the grief and rage and fears of other men, and your eyes become vacant, lost. I … I don’t think I could eat the pain of a thousand men. I don’t think I could.”
Chaa sat for a time letting Tull consider. “When you joined the tribe of the Pwi, I gave you your true name, Laschi Chamepar, Path of the Crushed Heart. Your heart will be crushed whether you become a Spirit Walker or not.”
You could save me, Tull thought. You could keep my heart from being crushed.
“I cannot save you,” Chaa said, answering the unspoken thought. “If you run from this future, it will simply overwhelm you.”
Tull didn’t want to hear these words. “How do I know you are right? You play games with people’s lives! You look into their future, then trade their hopes and dreams like coins to buy … to buy, I don’t know what.”
“To buy peace for as many people as possible,” Chaa said, “just as I can give you peace. I do what I must. I traded my sons’ lives for yours; now I ask you to give a life back to me. Bringing the sea serpents back was a worthy goal. But I want more from you. You must become a Spirit Walker. If you do not fulfill your potential, then my sacrifices will have been for nothing.”
Tull looked at Chaa and wondered how Zhopila could still love him, still sleep with him at nights, knowing that Chaa had sent her sons to die in Tull’s behalf. Tull held his arms around his legs, curled almost in a fetal position. “You talk as if becoming a Spirit Walker is a big thing—yet look at the armies of Craal. Look at the Creators plotting our destruction. What have your powers gained?”
Chaa stared into Tull’s eyes. “Now we talk of mysteries, things I would not openly reveal. You cannot guess what we have gained, Tull. You could not imagine this world without us. Ayaah, we’ve strong enemies—sorcerers among the Blade Kin, even enemies left from the dream-time in the Land of Shapes. They’ve brought our world to the edge of ruin. But we withstand them.”
Tull put his hands over his eyes. Like a dog circling its bed he returned to the previous argument. “Once I take a Spirit Walk, you say I can never go home. But I left my body when I climbed the Tower of the Worm. Perhaps I am already forever lost to myself!”
“Or perhaps when you search for yourself, someone better will be found,” Chaa said. “I am not the same young man I was before my father took me on my first Spirit Walk, just as the oak is no longer an acorn. I’ve walked the lives of ten thousand men. Does that make me less a man, or am I now a man ten thousand times over? Sometimes I walk a man’s future and see that he will be destroyed by pain, and I know that when I wake, I will feel his worms in my head. It is inevitable. But I can teach you to bear such pain. As a Spirit Walker, you will learn the flavors of men. For every person whose life is vinegar, you can find a person whose life is honey. Tull, wear the moccasins of the Spirit Walker!”
Tull closed his eyes, rubbed his face.
“You are right to be afraid, Tull. If you were not afraid of the gift, you would be too stupid to be worthy of it. I’ve sacrificed my children to bring about a better future. You know that you may be required to do the same, and you ask yourself: How much guilt can I bear?”
Guilt, that was the crux of it, Tull realized. To know the future was to become responsible for it, just as Chaa had become responsible for it.
For a moment Chaa took a pine cone, absently wrote with it on the ground. “You are a good man. I think you will follow the laws written in your heart. I have given two lives for you, and in time you will see that now that a gift has been given, a gift must be returned. This is a natural thing.”
The young Pwi in camp started to sing and abruptly stopped. A commotion began, people shouted. Darrissea Frolic came rushing to the grotto. She stood at the top of the small ridge for a moment, her blue cloak flapping in the moonlight as she peered into the shadow.
“What?” Chaa asked.
“You had better get up here, Chaa,” Darrissea said. “There’s a big gray bird out here, like nothing I’ve ever seen, and it is asking for the town of Smilodon Bay.”
The Spirit Walker rose to his feet, nervously dusted the redwood needles from his pants. Chaa said to Tull, “It seems that the future is thrust upon us, whether we have seen it or not.”
Tull rushed from the grotto to the campfire, and there he found the young people of the village standing next to a huge gray bird as large as the great-horned dragon. The beast stood six feet at the shoulders, yet it was no ordinary bird. It had the face of a woman, young and beautiful, with wide-set gray eyes and strong lips. Fine downy feathers covered her cheeks.
The Pwi boys stood close, almost daring to touch her, and Tull’s heart pounded.
“Back!” Tull shouted. Some boys turned to look at him, and Tull shouted again, “Run! Get back!”
The boys stepped back tentatively. Chaa followed Tull. “Get back or she’ll kill you!” Chaa said menacingly, and the boys leapt away at the Spirit Walker’s warning.
Anorath had a gun propped against a tree, a pump-action smooth bore that fired a slug large enough to rip open a woolly rhino; he grabbed it, covered the bird. Other boys pulled their swords and kutows. The bird sat on the ground, wings folded, feathers unruffled. Her huge gray eyes were empty, staring ahead as if dazed.
“What happened to her?” Tull asked, wondering why the bird was so still.
Anorath said, “She asked where Smilodon Bay is, and asked for Phylomon the Starfarer. We told her that Smilodon Bay is near, but that the Starfarer is gone. She stopped moving and now just sits. What should we do?”
Chaa shrugged, looked at Tull. “You tell them.”
Tull studied the bird. Her face, her wings. She was far larger than the deadly gray birds he’d seen up north, and she had a human face rather than a beak. He didn’t know if she was dangerous.
Perhaps the Creators had given her lips and a voice so she could deliver a message? Her head was smaller than a human’s. He wondered how much intelligence lurked behind those eyes and decided to test her.
He whispered to Anorath, “Ready your gun. If she moves, shoot her.” He grabbed a kutow from a boy, stepped close to the bird.
This is foolish, he told himself. If you flirt with death, she will cleave to you. He looked back at Chaa for advice but the Spirit Walker just shrugged.
“What do you want?” Tull asked, his mouth dry. She didn’t answer. “What town do you seek?”
The messenger’s eyes suddenly focused on Tull, and he cringed. She dug her great talons into the ground and said, “Smilodon Bay. I seek Smilodon Bay.”
“This town that you see is Smilodon Bay,” Tull said, gesturing expansively at the redwoods. The gray bird studied the trees quizzically, as if inspecting them.
“And who do you seek here?” Tull asked.
The bird sank her talons into the thick humus, readjusted her wings. “Phylomon the Starfarer.”
“I am Phylomon the Starfarer,” Tull said.
The gray bird tensed, like a hawk ready to pounce, but studied his feet, ran her eyes up over his body from toe to head, obviously mystified. “Phylomon the Starfarer has blue skin,” the bird said.
“I am blue,” Tull answered.
“You are not blue!” the bird screeched, flapping her wings in anger, glaring out over the crowd of young men that circled her.
Tull gestured to one young Pwi boy who had painted his face blue. “You are right! I am not blue, and I am not Phylomon. That man is Phylomon.”
The bird batted her wings. Her eyes fixed on the young man. She screeched and leapt into the air making gagging sounds as if she would vomit.
“Kill it! Kill it now!” Tull shouted, and Anorath fired, catching the bird’s right wing. The bird spun to the ground, tilted her head up to see, and Tull leapt forward and slammed the kutow into her head, splitting her skull.
Yet something swelled the dead bird’s throat, crawling up. Tull slammed his kutow into its neck.
A terrific jolt of electricity arced up from the wound, blinding him, hurling him back. He laid on the ground, dazed, the wooden shaft of the kutow smoldering in his hand, the soles of his moccasins smoking.
Chaa rushed forward wielding a brand from the fire, and a eel-like creature wiggled from the dead bird’s throat, ripping out her esophagus. The creature was huge, at least three feet long and nine-inches tall at the back. Its eyes were the same pale blue as its skin.
Chaa held the flame in front of the eel’s nose, and the creature stopped, as if blinded. Chaa shouted to the boys, “You young men get back! Get Back! There is more danger here than you can imagine!”
He eased toward the fire. The eel followed the flaming brand, sliding like a snake. It twisted its head from side to side, but its pale blue eyes seemed not to see the boys. It followed the flame.
When Chaa reached the bonfire, he tossed the brand into its heart. The great eel rushed forward to strike.
It wriggled into the flames and began to writhe, circling within the fire, seemingly unable to leave. A small bolt of lightning arced out of the creature, split a log by the fire, and yet the beast continued to race in circles through the flames.
Behind Chaa, the Pwi gasped. The dying eel whipped about, the muscles in its back straining like cords, scattering coals across the ground, plunging its long rasping tongue into flaming coals at the heart of the fire.
Tull watched that tongue, recalled how other eels in the north had attacked—flicking their tongues into the brain stems of their human victims, taking control of their bodies.
Chaa went to Anorath, took the gun and began shooting into the great eel. Holes ripped into its side, holes large enough to put a fist through, yet the wounds healed even as they watched. He shot off all rounds, reloaded, shot, and reloaded until he ran out of bullets.
The eel spun in a frenzy, looking for an enemy to strike, blind to anything but flames. Tull’s head cleared. Even with fifteen bullets in it, the eel did not slow.
Chaa shouted, “Use your spear to push the logs back into a circle. Throw sticks into the fire to keep it hot—or the creature will see you! Do not let the beast touch your sticks!” The boys moved forward cautiously.
Tull swallowed, listened to the sizzle and pop of the beast in the fire as the boys worked.
Chaa whispered to Tull. “The eel has a skin like Phylomon the Starfarer’s. The Creators made this one especially for him. You could not have killed it. Phylomon himself would have died here.”
Tull saw that Chaa’s hands were shaking even though his voice sounded calm.
Fava walked up beside Tull, holding Wayan, who slept in spite of all the noise. Tull asked Chaa, “Did you know the bird would come?”
“No. I suspected an attack, but sometimes it rains even on a Spirit Walker. I saw eels like these in my Spirit Walk, and I’ve touched their minds, for they are living creatures. Fire is their weakness. It draws them, yet blinds them.”
Chaa supervised the boys until the blue eel finally rolled to its back and lay twitching. Then he told the Pwi about the Creators’ treachery, how they’d killed the sea serpents with their lampreys, and how they planned to do more.
He made the Creators’ plans sound like a small thing, the schemes of children, and none of the Pwi doubted that Chaa had seen how to foil the Creators’ plot.
Tull had already brought the sea serpents back from Craal, defeating part of the Creators’ plans. Now when Phylomon the Starfarer returned, he would lead them north to destroy the Creators.
Tull stood with Fava and listened, not to the Spirit Walker, but to a fox barking in the distance and the wind rushing through the redwoods. He looked up through the black branches at the sky, and Fava nudged him.
She said, “Now I know why your eyes have seemed to gaze a thousand miles away. You have been keeping many secrets.”
“I did not want to ruin the kwea of our wedding,” Tull said. “I want you to always be able to look back and think of it as a happy time, not mingled with fear.”
Fava got up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Tull took Wayan from her.
They began ambling home, and when Tull glanced back, Chaa leaned over the fire, ringed by Pwi.
He was squatting over the carcass of the eel with a knife, skinning it. Chaa had many hunting trophies in his house—teeth of dinosaurs and lions, hides from bears—but Tull imagined the pale blue eel skin as a rug on the Spirit Walker’s floor, and thought it an odd trophy.
Tull carried Wayan back to the cabin. All through his walk, Tull held the small boy and wondered what the future would bring for Wayan.
Perhaps he would someday be carried away as a slave to Bashevgo, or perhaps the boy would die at the hands of the Creators. Maybe he would live here in town and be happy, marry well, grow old and die among friends. Yet that seemed too much to hope.
It had been only three weeks since Tull had taken Wayan from their father, rescued the child so that he should not be abused as Tull had.
And in Tull’s mind a little voice whispered, When you took Wayan to raise as your own son, you took him because you wanted to promise him a future.
When Tull reached the cabin, he laid Wayan in bed with Fava, set the fire, then went outside to think. He looked out over the waters at Smilodon Bay. The town below swept around him in a bowl shape, the gray stone houses hidden among the shadows of the redwoods. Pale lights from fires shone through some windows, and the light of Freya—one of the two smaller moons—made the smoke hanging over the chimneys gleam as if pale white ribbons floated above the town.
Overhead the stars seemed to want to burn a hole in the darkness. A red drone warship flamed like a comet on the horizon. Tull stood, tasting the cool night air on his tongue, and decided, Tomorrow I will become a Spirit Walker.
***