Blade Kin (7 page)
Authors: David Farland
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Genetic Engineering
Tull lay for a long time, and a calm dizziness entered him. He imagined a slaver in the forest, a slaver of the Blade Kin—a tall man, human with a strong nose and single eyebrow. He hid in the woods above Smilodon Bay, at night. Tull had never seen the man’s face before, but in his heart he recognized that this was how the slaver would look. The slaver stood on the hill above Smilodon Bay, and crept quietly, all dressed in black. The man’s heart pounded, afraid. Down in Smilodon Bay, lights shone in the streets.
Man of Peace watched the slaver, watched him and wanted something badly. Man of Peace went to the slaver, beheld pale green fronds of lightning dancing over a dark orb. Man of Peace entwined himself around a single rod of green light, and then with his tip, he danced across the dark hollow of the slaver’s soul.
A strange sensation passed through Tull, as if a breeze were blowing through him, and Tull realized he was touching this human—that in some way, Tull’s spirit was communicating with the slaver.
Suddenly, Tull felt as if a blade of ice had pierced him, and he broke contact. He sensed something behind him, turned to see two huge black orbs floating through the redwoods.
An inner voice shouted, “Spirit eaters!” and Tull fled.
Sound faded. The vision fragmented. Tull’s head ached as if struck with a mallet, and he crawled to his knees, and then vomited seer’s tea into the ashes of the empty fire.
The room spun, and he lay a moment, trying to regain consciousness, and then found himself walking with Chaa through the dark, stumbling on a narrow trail. A light rain fell, and Tull suddenly remembered that he had wakened earlier to find Chaa urging him to his feet.
“Where are we?” Tull asked.
“We are on the way back to your house,” Chaa answered.
“Oh,” Tull said, and he stopped. He realized he had blacked out, and didn’t know for how long. “What time is it?”
“Still early. Your endeavors lasted only for a couple of hours.”
“Did I connect with the slaver?”
“No,” Chaa said, laughing mildly. “You did not connect. To connect takes very long. You only saw him, and touched him, then you were frightened away.”
“What are spirit eaters?” Tull asked, and he stopped, waiting for his head to clear. He suddenly realized that Chaa had sent him to seek the slaver for some purpose.
Chaa helped hold Tull upright a moment. “Spirit eaters … In the Land of Shapes are creatures you cannot comprehend. Spirit eaters are … sometimes living people, who have hidden the lightning in their souls, concealed their own
effan
—their own holiness, or divinity. Instead, they are dark, and they feed on the souls of others. Sometimes spirit eaters are incorporeal, like the ones that came to you. That is all I can say about them.”
“Why did you have me seek a slaver?”
“I was testing to see how much control you had in the Land of Shapes. I hoped you would work harder if I gave you a warrior’s task. You did very well for a first try.”
Tull wanted to ask more, but his thoughts came slowly. He let Chaa usher him to the door to his hogan, help him through. The fire was burning low in the fireplace, and on the mat in the corner Fava and Wayan lay huddled together.
“Good night,” Chaa whispered. “Get some sleep.” He left.
Tull stood and stared stupidly for a moment, watching Fava. He squinted, realized that the drugs had not left him, for he could see into her, see the pink tendrils of light at her navel. There was almost no hollow to her soul—just the smallest of beads—and because of that he realized that she was a special woman, very precious.
He went and lay beside her, wrapped his arms and legs around her, and clung to her.
***
Chapter 9: Uknai
Uknai worked hard after Tull’s party, showing his pictures, trying to warn the people of Smilodon Bay about the terrors that would soon be coming out of Bashevgo. The following morning, he went with the Pwi boys out to a field and learned the basics of swordsmanship.
Uknai had never touched a sword. The Blade Kin did not permit it of Thralls. Yet he marveled how naturally the sword fit his hand, how clean his blows could be.
He suffered through hours of practice, wishing he were young. He felt shamed to be an old Thrall with no children, nothing but desire for vengeance keeping him alive. Often, when the grim despair struck, and he thought of his sweet woman, he wanted only to die as she had died. But rage made him live on.
Yes, it had been a good day. In all his years as a slave in Bashevgo, he’d never imagined anything as beautiful as this: watching the seeds of an army sprout.
When the sun set over Smilodon Bay, he went to Moon Dance Inn, which quickly filled with young Pwi from Finger Mountain and Muskrat Creek and Song of Glee—all young men who had heard rumors of strange happenings in town.
Uknai showed them his paintings, and his heart leapt when he saw their rage, the fanatic gleam in their eyes. For a man with no tongue, Uknai had become persuasive, even eloquent. But after nearly two days without sleep, he finally signaled to the townsmen that he needed rest, even though the hour was early.
“Please, I would be honored if you would sleep at my house!” one young boy said, the beginnings of a yellow beard under his chinless face. Uknai remembered the boy’s name, Farranon. Farranon’s eyes held awe.
Uknai grunted, carefully rolled his canvasses and placed them in their wooden map box, clutched the package under his tired arm.
Farranon wanted to carry them, but Uknai held tight. So many months of work had gone into the paintings. He could not bear the thought that some clumsy youth might stumble and crush them.
The boy opened the door, nearly dancing forward, and grabbed a taper by the doorway and set it alight. “This way, this way, just down the bridge and over the river to Pwi Town!”
The night was chill and a thick fog had risen from the bay. Up in the sky, Woden gleamed pale and milky blue, like a blind eye, half closed. An evening drizzle muddied the streets, and Uknai hurried in the cold, just behind Farranon who walked in his circle of light.
Uknai smelled the humans before he saw them—the musky human scent of vegetables, like broccoli or molding corn. But the boy must not have smelled them, for a man in black robes rushed forward, swung a club down and knocked Farranon aside.
The torch fell in the mud, sputtered, and Uknai saw men around him, at least six, all in black robes. Two stuck a sack over Farranon’s head, silently dragged him away.
“You should have stayed in Bashevgo,” a deep-voiced human said, stepping forward. He was huge in girth, if not in height, and he had a great dark beard.
Two men grabbed Uknai from behind. He dropped his pictures, yelled “Ahh,” and tried to pull away.
Something hit Uknai hard in the back of the head, staggering him, and the attackers managed to grab Uknai’s arms.
Pain lanced through his arthritic shoulders, searing hot. His legs wobbled, and he nearly fell, but the men kept him on his feet.
Uknai looked at his shoulders where the pain lanced through; his captors were holding him upright with meat hooks. They did not intend to ship him back to Bashevgo. They wouldn’t ship merchandise so torn.
Uknai screamed for help.
The man in front of him laughed. “Go ahead and scream, you tongueless bastard. Come on, let’s hear it!”
Uknai screamed, leaning his head back, trying to project his croaking voice toward the inn. He sounded like a hound.
“Gah, Gah, Gah,” his captor barked, mocking. “Right, Enough of that,” he laughed. “Behold your executioner.” He pulled back the hood to his robe, exposing his face. The Mayor smiled down at Uknai, pulled a long knife from a wrist sheath.
“Go ahead! Scream once more. You can’t wake anyone in this town,” Garamon said. He plunged the knife into Uknai’s stomach and twisted.
Uknai screamed from deep in his belly, screamed for release, his ruined voice no louder than the croak of a gull soaring over a vast and empty sea.
***
Chapter 10: Murder
Tull and Fava were sleeping when the alarm rose, a cry of “Murder! Murder!”
The sound came distantly to Tull’s little hogan. He staggered up. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Fava said. “Someone got killed. Go see who!” She handed him his sword, and Tull ran out, strapping it on. He could see dozens of people in the human part of town, gathered in a circle. He ran to the place.
Old Uknai lay in a pool of blood, a burnt taper near his elbow, still smoldering. Nearly fifty people had gathered in the street, shock apparent in their pale faces. Whatever tracks might have been in the mud were hopelessly erased.
At first Tull thought Uknai dead, but the old man gasped in short pants. Someone had bandaged the wound, but the pool of blood beneath Uknai was fresh, and Tull realized that the attackers had not gotten far.
All around, Tull listened to comments. “Just got here … heard him scream … someone get some light.…”
He peered up and down the road. The mayor’s house sat on the corner, two doors down, the windows lighted within, and the mayor’s dogs were not barking. They were locked in their shed behind the house.
Garamon must have heard the shouts,
Tull thought.
An honest man would not hesitate to find out what was going on, even if it meant he had to run half-naked into the night.
Tull glanced behind him. “Anorath, come with me,” he said sprinting for the Mayor’s house. He watched the windows as he ran, saw a shadow within—the mayor at the fireplace. Tull decided not to knock on the door, and when he looked behind, nearly everyone was with him. Tull hit the front door full-tilt, smashed it.
The mayor stood, stoking the fire in his night clothes. Garamon turned to Tull and shouted, “What’s the meaning of this?”
Tull grabbed the candlestick from the table, waved it near Garamon and said, “You’ve tracked blood on the floor!”
Garamon’s eyes grew wide. “That’s only mud!”
Anorath bent to inspect the floor. Garamon reached into his robe, pulling out something that flashed in the candlelight. Tull only guessed that it was a pistol when the muzzle flash went off, and someone cried out behind him. Anorath fell, grabbing Tull for support, tackling him.
“He’s got a gun!” someone shouted too late.
The mayor whirled, sprinted through a maroon curtain back toward the kitchens.
Tull grabbed Anorath momentarily, to keep him from falling. As he set the man down on the floor, the Pwi raced past him, giving chase to the mayor.
Some of them went back to the bedrooms, shouting, apparently unable to find the man.
But soon some boys brought out Garamon’s wife, along with his twelve-year-old daughter. The women stood huddled in a corner, their faces pale.
Garamon’s wife had dark-red hair and an aging face, but his daughter was all Garamon, the same black hair, the flabby cheeks. One of the Pwi rushed to the fire and pulled out a half-burned oil skin. It was one of Uknai’s smoldering paintings.
Tull sat on the floor, watching Anorath bleed from the ribs. The wound was small and clean, and Tull decided his friend would live.
Yet Tull felt impotent, helpless. He could do nothing but sit and hold his friend. The mayor’s house was large, the furniture rough-hewn, rustic. On the mantel above the fireplace, were odd-shaped decorative glass bottles—midnight blue, lime green, amber and scarlet.
As the crowd grew, the young men decided that the mayor must have fled out a back door. So they ran from house to house, shed to shed, and began searching for the mayor.
Zealous young Pwi shattered the windows to human shops, then climbed inside to search.
They herded some humans, the mayor’s friends, into the streets for questioning.
Chaa himself strode from room to room in Garamon’s house, checking the walls. At last he settled before Garamon’s wife and asked plainly, “Did you know that your husband was a slaver?”
She looked at the pitiless faces of the Neanderthals and shook. “I didn’t know!”
“Did you ever guess that he might be a slaver?”
“Never!” she said, but her eyes showed that she lied.
Chaa turned to the daughter. “And you, did you guess your father was a slaver?”
“Maybe,” the child admitted.
“Do you know what we do to slavers?” Chaa asked the child. “Do you know the penalty?”
“You chop off their heads,” the girl answered.
“That’s right,” Chaa said. “Behind the wall in your kitchen, I hear muffled cries. There is a passage behind it where your father takes his slaves. He has one there now. Can you show it to me?”
The girl only stood, unmoving. Chaa put his arm around her. “I will not harm you. Please, show us the passage.”
The girl led them to the kitchen, pulled back a cupboard to reveal a secret tunnel. A dozen Pwi boys rushed into the hole and soon returned with Farranon, chained hand and foot.
“The passage comes out at one of the warehouses by the docks!” One boy reported, so excited that he shouted, “but Garamon has already left!”
Tull looked down the passage in the darkness; rage filled him.
For an hour the Pwi searched the docks, until it became evident to all of them that the mayor was gone. Some thought that he must have sailed away. Others suspected that one of his friends and hid him in town. Others thought he had gone to the woods.
Tull felt powerless.
When Chaa returned from the hunt an hour later, Tull took his arm and snarled, “Teach me how to find Garamon.”
***
Chapter 11: Friendly Knives
The morning after the attack against Uknai, the men of the village hunted for Garamon. Tull drew guard duty on the north end of town and took Wayan with him, while Fava went at her father’s house and painted a toy for Wayan—a sabertooth cat she had carved.
She’d already daubed a coat of soft tan stain over it with a piece of wild cotton, and now she painted its teeth and underbelly white.
Her clumsy Neanderthal hands were not designed to perform such detailed work, so it took great patience. But she found that Tull’s pliers and clamps and other watchmaking tools made the job easier.
As she invested care into painting the sabertooth, she could feel the kwea of the figurine becoming stronger. The figurine itself was becoming a token of power, and it emanated beauty in the same way that a fire emanates heat, until Fava felt suffused.
After a long time, she heard someone outside. Tull clapped his hands and said, “I am here.”
Fava hurried to hide the figurine. Wayan rushed into the house, racing down the dark passageways, looking for Itzha, the youngest of Fava’s three sisters.
“Did you find Garamon?” Fava asked as Tull stepped through the door.
He hugged her and held her for a long moment before answering. “Not yet. Some boys took the mayor’s own hounds and set them to tracking him. They went southwest of town for about a mile, then circled back to the north part of town. They lost his scent just inside the mayor’s cloth shop. We’re sure he went there to get something—money, or maybe clothing. After that, I don’t think he could have left town. We’ve set the Pwi guarding every entrance and patch of bushes. I think he’s hiding in someone’s house.”
“In the house of a human?”
“Probably,” Tull said. “It would have to be another slaver. Uknai is still holding on, and getting better. He drew stick figures to show that at least seven others were with Garamon.”
Fava felt uneasy, shifted on her feet. Eight slavers in town. So many. “Are the Pwi searching the humans’ houses?”
“Not yet,” Tull answered. “I don’t think it would be a good idea. It would frighten them. Besides, all those houses were built a hundred years ago, when the slavers still used to try to sail into the bay. They all have escape holes and secret passageways. We might hunt for weeks and never find him.”
Fava nodded, decided to change the subject. “Are you ready for lunch?”
“If you want,” Tull answered, and they went to the kitchen and made small talk while Fava mixed cornmeal, dried pumpkin, salt, soda, and cream together to make thin cakes. As she worked, Tull seemed nervous. He paced the room, peering out the windows. She asked him to go to the ice house out back and cut some steaks from a haunch of giant elk.
Tull got an old rusted blade from the knife shelf. “Don’t use that knife!” Fava warned. “
Tcho-kwezhet!
It isn’t friendly.”
“It’s the only one here,” Tull explained.
She studied the knife, feeling the kwea, the residue of her accumulated emotions, black and seething. The knife did not like them at all. “That knife has a bad heart,” she said. “My father must have taken the others to the smith’s to sharpen. You had better go there and get one.”
“This knife is all right,” Tull said, heading out the back door.
“No!” Fava shrieked, imagining Tull with that evil knife, falling and gutting himself in one motion. “Please, get another knife.”
“I’m not going across town to get another knife. This one is fine,” Tull hurried out the door. Fava ran and looked after him.
He crossed the yard to the ice house, which was dug into the back of the hill behind the main house. Tull unbarred the heavy door and went in. Fava kept expecting Tull to fall, kept expecting to see him come out covered with blood, but he returned safely with the steaks.
Still she watched each step, afraid he’d stumble, slit himself open. It seemed that he only made it to the door by some great fortune. She could feel the malevolence from that knife, hissing and steaming like soup boiling over into a fire.
When he reached the door, she took the knife, carefully with both hands and set it back on the shelf. “Please,” she said, “don’t ever touch that evil thing again.”
“It isn’t evil,” Tull said. “It’s just a knife.”
“It isn’t just a knife!” Fava shouted. “It’s an angry knife!” Tull looked at her oddly, and Fava asked, “What’s wrong?”
“You don’t understand? Do you?” Tull said, and he paced the room, “How does the sky feel today?” It was a common greeting among the Pwi, meaning ‘How do you feel?’
Fava took his hand, placed it between her breasts, just holding it. “The sky feels good today, because you are with me.”
Tull shook his head, led her to the hall. “Look at this room. What do you feel? What do you feel when you look at that mammoth skull?”
Fava looked up. Above the hallway that led to her father’s Spirit Room was a mastodon’s skull, and its long tusks curled down to the floor on either side of the hall. The kwea that issued from it was one of enjoyment; she had climbed and slid down those tusks many times as a child, so that the tusks were still ivory-colored on top, but had yellowed underneath. She said, “I feel happy.”
“Aren’t you afraid of those tusks?” Tull asked. “One of your sisters could fall on them, could even get hurt, couldn’t she?”
“Yes, but it has never happened before.”
“Still it
could
happen,” Tull said. “So why don’t you take the skull down?”
“But it has never happened. The skull likes it there. It has always treated us well.”
“And what of the knife?” Tull said, waving toward the kitchen. Icy fear washed through her. It was a knife she would never touch. Tull was being cruel to keep referring to it, to have displayed it. He knew that it held vile kwea.
“That knife is very dangerous,” Fava said. “It does not like me.”
“How do you know? Because it cut you?”
“Yes. It also cut Zhopila once and almost took off her finger! You should not trust it. It is very dangerous!”
“It’s sharp,” Tull corrected. “You have other knives in the house that are just as sharp, just as deadly, yet you feel no evil kwea emanate from them.”
Fava simply stared at him. She could not see his point. That one knife might like you while another would not was well known.
“I don’t see the world like you do,” Tull said. “I don’t feel the kwea that you feel. I can’t, not completely. The knife does not have any intent. It doesn’t emit emotions. You just imagine it. You Pwi all live in the past. You see the world, and everything is shrouded with kwea—an alley may frighten you because a dog jumped out of it once, but the alley next to it makes you feel secure because you found shelter from the dog there. Phylomon the Starfarer explained it to me. He says that part of your brain, called the hypothalamus, is very large. It makes the Pwi feel everything more deeply than humans do—fear, love, despair, loneliness, joy. And all these emotions color your world. When you touch my hand, I don’t really radiate love, do I?”
Fava touched him, felt the invisible waves of joy radiating, tangible as a lover’s cry issuing from his mouth. She knew that humans claimed not to feel kwea, but that seemed hard to understand.
Humans claim there is no kwea only because they feel none,
she thought.
They are all like blind men who teach that there is no light only because they cannot see it.
“Yes, you radiate love for me,” Fava said.
“Yet I haven’t always loved you,” Tull said. “I loved Wisteria.”
“Even then, your spirit radiated passion for me,” Fava countered. “Always. Even if you only felt
hechazho,
cattle love, for me, you always enjoyed my presence.”
Tull shrugged as if at his wit’s end. “Who rules Bashevgo?”
“Adjonai, Him We All Fear.” It was a question any child could answer.
“And can you feel his kwea? Can you feel him reaching out to snatch you?”
“The redwoods hide us,” Fava said uncertainly. She did not like thinking about Adjonai. It made perspiration rise on her forehead.
“But the redwoods can’t always hide you, can they? The slavers find us sometimes and take us to Craal.”
Fava trembled. She could feel the dark god beyond the mountains, searching for her, stretching his long hands across wilderness like a cloud. She choked back a sob.
Tull stepped close and held her. “Adjonai is not really here,” Tull said. “He’s an illusion, created by your fear. He’s not real. I’ve been to Craal. The sun shines just as brightly on Denai and Bashevgo as it does here. People laugh and fall in love there. But their fear is strong. They fear the Blade Kin and the Slave Lords. They are so frightened that their feet would not carry them if they tried to run away. There is no Adjonai. He is only the sum of your fears.
“Yet,” Tull said, “you don’t fear the Blade Kin enough. That is not your fault; it is the fault of kwea. You don’t believe they will come in force, only because they have never done it before. They are a knife that has never cut you deeply. They’ve never attacked a town this large. Yet the humans here fear such an attack.”
Outside, the gulls wheeled over the ocean and cried. The sound came through the windows distantly, almost like the startled cries of children, and Fava could feel the blood pounding in her veins. “You are saying the humans are smarter than us. I don’t think they are smarter. They just have clever little hands. They are just lucky that their ancestors lived among the stars. Now they rot down here on the ground, just like we do.”
“No,” Tull said. “I think that our ancestors on Earth could never have gone to the stars. We Pwi, because of kwea, because our thoughts are so strongly tied to our emotions, we always live in the past. We surround ourselves with the people we love, with the things we enjoy, and we live off the accumulated kwea. As long as we had our huts and our families and our favorite meat on the fire, we would have been overwhelmed by pleasant kwea, and we would have been content.”
Fava looked at him, and everything he said seemed so obvious. Who could want more than that? It should be enough for anyone.
“We cannot think like the humans do,” Tull said. “We don’t look to the same source for happiness. The humans, because they are seldom aware of kwea, they live only in the future. They look ahead and plan to be happy somewhere in the future, at some distant time, when they have accumulated all the wealth and power they think they will need. For them, a family and a hut and good food on the table is not always enough.”
Tull squeezed her hand, and Fava looked down. Tull had huge hands, big paws like a Pwi, with robust joints on fat fingers and a thumb that was not tilted like a human’s.
“If they can never be happy, then we should pity them,” Fava said. She suddenly realized what he was saying. “You mean to say, you are Pwi, but your heart is human? You find it hard to be happy today because you live for tomorrow?” She saw it was true. Tull was like her father, like a Spirit Walker, always scheming and thinking about tomorrow. The similarity had never occurred to her. She had married someone like her own father.
“I am neither human, nor Pwi,” Tull said. “I am Tcho-Pwi, No People, the Un-family. I can wear your clothes, even look like a Pwi, but I cannot be Pwi at heart, just as I can never be completely human. I don’t feel kwea as strongly as you do. I feel no animosity emanating from the knife as you do. To me, it is just a piece of wood and metal. Yet, in some things I do feel kwea. I feel love emanating from you. I feel the kwea of our time together, and even though I love you, I fear that perhaps the human part of me will never let me crave you the way that you crave me. I am not a Pwi. Even if I were, you know how I have lived. You know how my father beat me, and kept me chained to the wall as if I were one of his dogs. My past is so dark, I cannot find pleasure in it. And when I look at the future—I cannot see much reason to hope for happiness.
“Maybe that is why, when I’m with you, I wish time would stop, so every moment would become endless. I guess that what I want most of all is for just a few days to forget about the world, all of its past and all of its future, so that I can enjoy you.”
Fava stood for a long moment. “I understand … I think. If I could give you those days, I would. But I don’t know how to do it.”
“Fava,” Tull said, “your father has asked me to become his student, to learn to Spirit Walk.” Tull touched her shoulder. For a moment, Fava felt a foreboding. Chaa would take Tull from her as certainly as if he were a slaver dragging Tull to a distant land. By the tone of his voice, Tull was asking permission to go.
Fava nodded thoughtfully, considering whether to give that permission. “He asked you this two nights ago, when he took you aside at the lake. Didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Tull answered softly.
Fava watched him standing there, a little too far away by Pwi standards, and his face was closed, secretive. Tull still hid something from her. She could read him for the moment, read him as easily as if he were a Pwi, and something in her craved to be able to read him always, hungered to grow so knowledgeable about him that his body would become like a paper with words written on it.
“You are hiding something from me,” Fava said. “You keep doing this to me. You keep secrets, and the secrets keep us apart.”
Tull sighed deeply. “I didn’t wait for your permission,” Tull said. “I didn’t ask for your advice. Last night, I crept out of the house and met your father. He gave me seer’s tea to help open my spirit eyes.”
Fava’s nostrils flared, and the blood ran hot and angry in her veins. She tried to control her words, to keep from saying angry things, but the words seemed to fly from her mouth. “Am I even a wife to you? Do you pretend to give yourself to me in the wedding circle, and then sneak out of our bed?”
Tull stepped back, his face a mask of surprise, as if he had never imagined that Fava was even
capable
of becoming angry. “I’m sorry,” Tull said. “I just wanted to protect you!”
He stepped close as if to hug her, and a strangled cry escaped from deep in Fava’s throat. “You don’t need to protect me!” Fava shouted. She slapped him in the chest, hard. Fava knew her Pwi strength. If Tull had been a full-blooded human, the blow might have broken some ribs. As it was, he stepped back, obviously stung.
