by Ken Altabef
“We’ve no way to fight this,” said Maguan. “No way at all.” He thought of Asatsiak’s shattered body lying in the snow at the Anatatook camp. He thought of Pilarqaq and their children.
Talliituk growled like an enraged animal and charged at the growing circle of ice, his snow knife clenched in his fist. Whatever he intended to do, Maguan never found it out. Talliituk didn’t even reach the perimeter of shimmering crystal before he was stopped cold. The knife dropped from his grip, his knees bent and folded.
With incredible speed his body froze solid, every hair on his parka spiking up like a dog with its hackles raised. Half a scream was forced from his lips as he burst apart into fist-sized chunks of flesh and animal skin.
Gory pellets of the bloody spray hailed down on Maguan as he crouched low in the stone chamber. A shiver went through him. The demon was too hideous to bear, its alien shape too frightful to look upon. The same fate waited for him. His blood ran cold. At least for Talliituk it had been a quick death. Maguan must wait for it. Or maybe it was better to charge and be done with it.
“STAY DOWN!” shouted a voice.
Maguan looked up but saw no one. Of course his visitor could not be seen, he realized, but she could be felt. Perhaps the bond between brothers and sisters made it easier.
“Alaana? You’re here! I can feel it.”
There came no answer. He was certain it had been his sister’s voice. He felt Alaana’s presence up above the cache. Though she could not be seen, this did not worry Maguan for he knew his sister could travel through the air in spirit-form if she wished.
He ducked down.
Shouting at her brother used up most of Alaana’s remaining strength. She knew she couldn’t manifest herself again. The desperate spirit flight from Black Face had taken its toll.
She hadn’t been sure she could make her brother hear, she hadn’t been sure her soul flight would take her to Forked River in time. She wasn’t sure of a lot of things, but doubt would no longer hold her back.
As soon as the cave wall had given her the words Alaana had sat down on the cavern floor. Ben came to her, bringing food. She shooed him away. There was no time.
She bowed her head and took flight.
During the mad rush across the frozen tundra, Alaana regretted not taking at least a few bites of food. Her spirit-woman needed no such nourishment; it was driven by force of will alone. But her body, battered and abused and left behind in the cave, was another matter. Death reached out for it a second time.
Alaana glared at the huge circle of ice lattice that had formed around the cache. There were more than just one. The thing was so bizarre in shape it was impossible to tell where one creature ended and the next began.
“Hold off!” she told them, “This cold won’t last! This storm will pass, and you’ll soon go back to that deep sleep of ages.” It was useless. She knew they wouldn’t listen. “One day the cold times will come again, I promise. Then you’ll have another chance.”
“You die! Invader!” buzzed the crackling chorus.
Alaana felt the icy hand, deep in her chest, tighten its grip on her heart.
“Tammakfaa! Ixaannti, Ixaatni!” These were old words in the dead language of the Tunrit. As Alaana unleashed the spell, she felt the power of the ancient Tunrit magic. They had left the people of Nunatsiaq so many gifts, and this another debt owed to them.
Tunrit magic. A different kind of magic.
Sorcery.
Sila was not really her patron; the Wild Wind would not help her. The other, the true force behind her calling, remained unknown. Unknown and hidden. So be it, thought Alaana. Everything was closing in. Everything falling apart. But not Maguan. She would not lose Maguan.
She had been told she could do nothing without Sila, but that was Old Manatook’s lie. Everything had been turned around. If she had to rely on the older magic of the Tunrit, if she had to use sorcery, so be it.
Years ago she had begged the favor of the Ring of Stones, using their long memories to open a tunnel into the past, bringing ghosts forward to fight Beluga Killer.
Now she called upon the time Ahead, a time of disaster and woe when a dark cloud hung above all of the world. This spell did not ask permission. This was a command. She felt the raw power flow through her spirit-woman as she split the air, bending the will of the world itself.
And she brought fire.
The sky, folding over like a loose tent flap, opened up. And what lay behind was even more horrible than the demon-haunted, storm-tossed sky of Nunatsiaq. The blizzard of snow was replaced by a blizzard of heat and flame.
Alaana glimpsed a place as grotesque and bizarre as any she could ever have imagined. The ground was gray and beaten flat, and the houses of men rose impossibly high, tall and square, stretching up to the sky.
These buildings, seen through a dark smoky haze of destruction, stared down at her from row upon row of square eyes, all empty. This once-great city was ruined, its edifices crumbling away, its streets and avenues abandoned, a tortured death cry echoing all around. The very air itself was crisp with fire. This place swarmed with millions of invisible dead, all joined in one horrific death scream.
This terrifying vision shocked Alaana to the core. How far in the future was this? How many years? She didn’t know.
A cloud of heat and steam in the shape of a mushroom. A heat so intense it scarred the very world itself. What did it mean? What else could it mean? Death. The end of men perhaps, an inheritance of ash and flame. There was so much flame, the buildings melted and ran into the street. The air sizzled. Metal and stone crisped black. There was so much flame, she could borrow a little.
The ice demons howled as the intense ghost-heat seared them into oblivion. With a great hiss of steam they were gone.
Alaana gasped as the fire burned away the icy remnant of the demon clawing at her heart.
Great gouts of gray steam swirled all around. In order to protect her brother she had cast the blazing heat away from the stone-walled cache pit, focusing the fire outward. Deep in the trove, Maguan suffered no burn from spiritual fire called through the tunnel of time.
The threat to Maguan came from the opposite direction, the bitter cold of Nunatsiaq.
The icy wind kicked up again. Never matter, thought Alaana. She had fire enough left over to keep her brother warm all the way home.
“Hurry, brother. Load up the sled. It’s a long journey back, but we’ll make it.”
CHAPTER 39
UP FROM THE ICE
“Aaahhhh!” screamed Narssuk.
“Nuuurghhhh!” groaned Vithrok. The sorcerer squeezed harder, he dug the raking nails of his spirit-claws even further into the weather-spirit’s ragged soul but he’d begun to grow tired. How long had it been? The two of them, locked together above the Ring of Stones? He could not do much more. The exertion had taken its toll. The weather-spirit bucked in wild agony. If Narssuk hadn’t been helplessly insane before, it certainly was now. Vithrok regretted that, but stood determined to do whatever was necessary to succeed. Even if it consumed him entirely, he would never give up.
The cutting winds had at last reached deep enough into the ever-frost, stripping away thousands of years to expose blue ice. The old ice, dating back to a distant past, long forgotten. His prize was at hand.
A sudden disturbance, not far off, shook his concentration. He sensed a tidal flow of Tunrit magic, of his own magic. A burst of atomic fire. Atomic fire? For a moment, knocked off balance, Vithrok let up his torment of Narssuk.
And it became clear to Vithrok what had happened. It was the little shaman, using the Tunrit fire spell. Of course, thought Vithrok, his old enemies the ice demons must have been roused by the intense cold of the storm. And Alaana had realized the means to destroy them. Alaana’s use of Vithrok’s magic was impressive. It shone like a beacon, revealing her position to his spirit-vision like a bonfire in the night. She was not far away. The caves at Black Face. A place Vithrok knew well.
H
e also sensed Alaana’s weakened condition. She was near death. When Vithrok had called forth the future’s fire to combat the ice creatures, all those thousands of years ago, it had nearly killed him too. She could fare no better.
As soon as it was called, the fire blew itself out. It didn’t take much of it to dispel the ice demons, as Vithrok recalled. And so the little shaman had made a victory for herself. Just so, thought Vithrok. He wouldn’t fail today, either. They walked parallel paths, both suffering near to death, both winning the day.
As he stood distracted, Narssuk tried once again to escape. The infantile weather-spirit tumbled lamely away, spinning this way and that, unable to find clear direction among the fierce winds of its own creation.
Not now. Vithrok would not allow it. Not when they were so close, and he about to claim his own prize. Vithrok dug his claws back in.
“You’re killing me!” screamed Narssuk.
“No, I won’t kill you. I need you. I will restore you, especially you. You have so much of the Beforetime in you.”
Just a little bit more. They were almost there.
One more scream.
“Aaaawwwrrgh!”
And done.
Released, Narssuk blew away.
And done. Vithrok looked down.
There it was, right where they had left it.
***
After the Sighted Ones had betrayed him — the one person who might have helped them — after their petty revolt resulted in his imprisonment in the soulless catchstone, they had held a funeral. A funeral! Tulunigraq, in his feeble, cracked bird-voice, argued that they must destroy the body. None would listen. For Vithrok, whatever his faults, had been the greatest hero among them. Mutilate his corpse? Not their champion who had stood against the turgats and gained them so much. Not their Light-Bringer. Their Truth.
The Tunrit decided instead to bury his lifeless body, to bury it deep here at the Ring of Stones as a monument to his achievements. And so they dug down into the ever-frost and built a coffin of ice which no man could ever happen upon or disturb. How long had they kept at it, wondered Vithrok, digging down into the ice? A year, a century? The Stones, who had told him the tale, had left that detail to the imagination. The Stones had been around since the beginning, and knew time in a different way. The Moon waxed and waned, the sky turned and turned. How long?
For now, it didn’t matter at all. His body was there, preserved in the deep blue ice just as they had left it.
Vithrok’s weary spirit fell exhausted into the body. A sublime sensation of peace came over him at last. He hadn’t realized what a task it had been holding his unclothed spirit together. In the body he didn’t have to struggle every instant to avoid dissolution. He was home. He forced stiff-frozen limbs to motion. He flexed creaky fingers. He drew breath once more.
Even so, he remained incomplete. Of the three souls, he possessed his name and his inua, but not the breath of life. That could never be restored. His body would remain dead flesh, animated by force of will alone. Dead but not dead. It was funny. He had become the physical embodiment of the mantra repeated so endlessly to himself during his long imprisonment. Dead but not dead. Good enough.
Up out of the ice Vithrok rose, surrounded by the Ring of Stones. Again, this place.
But now he was the master. The storm’s fury had utterly demolished them, rendering the once glorious megaliths as so much rubble, crumbling to black dust and bitter dregs of memory. Vithrok took a step forward. He kicked the last upright fragment of blasted stone and it dissolved into a puff of dust. And done. So much for his prison and his cairn.
Vithrok rose from the mud a second time. The irony was not lost on him. Here was a bargain similar to the past, only in reverse. During the Great Rift the spirits of the Tunrit, so joyous and free, had been reduced to meat and blood when heaven was stolen from them. And they had struggled so mightily against it. Vithrok recalled the misery that had nearly destroyed them that first day, and remembered his words spoken in the pit of that despair, rousing them with a message of truth. Rise up, rise up.
Now he had willingly surrendered his free-roaming spirit to a cage of flesh once again, in order to prevent it from flowing apart. He must die again to live. Destroy to rebuild. It was necessary.
The world needed to be saved and he was the only one who could do it. The only one left. How much time did he have? The stars turned in the sky, turning, turning, what if they turned back? The Never Moves shone directly above. Quimmiitt, the Five Dogs, ran high in the west and the Breastbone not far behind. No, no. He would have his chance. He had plenty of time. He was not trapped in the body; his spirit could always fly free. He was not imprisoned again.
Vithrok felt the weight of fatigue crash down on him. And so he remembered. The body brought its own set of limitations. He was tired, and must rest. Time to go home. Time. Vithrok chuckled dryly, marveling at the sound produced by dry, blackened lips and dead tongue. Time. He would fight that battle another day.
At last reclothed, exhausted, he strode North.
Behind him the stones, now rendered to gravel and black sand, rumbled and shook. Something else was rising from the prison, something else had been released.
Vithrok turned.
The being burst forth, a monster of inexhaustible violence and fury. It took shape out of wrecked stone and shards of the shattered ice the storm had scattered on the wind. It gusted itself together with a howl of mindless rage. The figure was taller than Vithrok, its hulking shoulders topped by a flat head with pointed snout. Its bellow sounded a monstrous challenge as the shards drew together, taking the shape of a huge white bear.
Its eyes, sharp crystals of ice, shone down at him with cold malice. Vithrok realized what must have happened. This was the vengeful spirit of Beluga Killer, the demonic bear Alaana had lured to this place. Tunrit ghosts had fought the bear, trapping it deep within the ice. It had been bested, but not destroyed.
Before Vithrok could take another step Beluga Killer came raging at him, swinging a massive paw to strike off his head.
The paw nearly met its mark. But the claws stopped cold, a finger’s breadth from Vithrok’s face.
The demon bear struggled mightily. It had been driven insane. Perhaps, trapped in the ice for so long it too had suffered the torments of time. Now it faced something even worse — the Tunrit sorcerer. Despite the bear’s incredible strength, Vithrok subdued its mind almost instantly. In a test of will, Vithrok must always be master. He was a creature of the Beforetime, a contemporary of the great turgats and almost as powerful. No petty ghost could put up contest.
The test of wills lasted only an instant. Even at the brink of exhaustion, Vithrok would not be denied.
The construct of ice dropped away as the Tunrit crushed the soul of the giant bear with his mighty spirit-hand. But, hungry as he was, he did not consume it.
This ghost would serve another purpose.
His thoughts once again ran to the little shaman. And so, a victory for them both. One in fire and one in ice. Which was the stronger?
Alaana possessed a connection to a wellspring of power Vithrok dare not oppose directly, but her human form had weaknesses. There were ways to eliminate the threat. Destroy the husband, and the wife would fall. Destroy the people, and the shaman would fall. The game was almost over. As soon as he regained enough strength he would finish it.
Nothing will stop me now, he thought. He clenched his fist. Within his dead fingers the soul of Beluga Killer moaned in helpless subjugation. And this was unexpected good fortune. The final piece of his plan had fallen so easily into his lap.
It was a good day indeed.
CHAPTER 40
CROSSROAD
“I want to thank you,” said McPearson, “for pulling us through that storm.” He took Aquppak’s hand and shook it up and down. “We won’t soon forget it. Isn’t that right, Roy?”
Roy Oakes sat before the fire pit, his hands stretched above the simmering whale-oil lamp as Alaa
na inspected his foot. Two of his toes had already fallen off. The rest of the foot up to the ankle was hard and bone white. “If I ever see a real fire again,” he said, “I swear I’ll dive right in and take a bath in it!”
McPearson laughed. The others had not understood a word.
“The foot is no good,” announced Alaana. “I had better take it off before you go.”
“What’s she say?” asked Oakes.
“She wants to amputate,” replied McPearson.
Oakes recoiled, jerking his foot away. “No thank you, no thank you. No way. She’s not taking my foot! We’ll find a proper doctor back at Pelly Bay.”
“That’s a long way,” said McPearson.
“She’s not touching me,” said Oakes. He attempted to cram his dead foot back into a boot.
“Suit yourself,” said McPearson.
Aquppak pulled him gently aside. “He’ll die.”
“Could be,” said McPearson. “But there’s nothing else for it. Tell you the truth, I’m jolly well tired of nursemaiding that useless git. I’ve got better things to do. A trading post to run.”
“And the guns?” asked Aquppak. “How many?”
“I’ll send back a dozen,” returned McPearson.
Aquppak looked quizzically at him. He hadn’t understood that last word.
“Ten,” said McPearson, showing the fingers of both hands.
“It will be enough,” said Aquppak.
“This is our answer!” said Aquppak. He held the rifle up so all the men could see. “With this I can take down a caribou at a hundred paces.”
Patloq reached for the weapon. Aquppak jerked it away.
“Don’t touch the metal barrel in this cold. Your fingers will stick. Only the wood stock, see? And if you must touch the metal, chill your hands in the snow first.”
“The hunting will be better,” said Nuralak. He nodded in support, and among the hunters his nod carried a lot of weight. “Much better.”
“This is no good,” said Alaana. She joined the ring of men standing near the cave entrance. Nunatsiaq lay quietly outside, blanketed in a layer of white. The winds had died away but the frost was slow in lifting, the days very short. Winter was not far off.
