by Ken Altabef
Alaana nodded.
“But just as concerns and doubts prevent travel to the other spiritual realms, in order to get to the shadow world one must embrace them. This is difficult for a shaman, for he risks losing his power. Can you do that?”
“That won’t be difficult,” said Alaana. “I have despair enough.” She was thinking of her lost Tama.
“I can show you how,” said Quixaaragon, “but you can’t go like this. Burned in spirit and battered in body. Not yet. You can’t face that sorcerer there like this. You need some time to heal.”
“Time,” said Alaana. “Time is the enemy.”
“We’ll get there.”
Alaana smiled at the little dragon. Her heart already felt lightened. “Then I guess we’re in this together.”
CHAPTER 42
A POWERFUL NAME
Footfalls stomping out of the north.
Klah Kritlaq looked up from the prayer mat he was weaving.
“What’s that sound?” asked his son Qilaq, seven winters old.
“Sit still,” advised Klah Kritlaq. He peered over the outcropping of shale he’d been resting against.
A lone man came striding toward the Tanaina camp. He wore a coat of primeval skins, bulky furs ripped from some animal long extinct. Where the furs parted in front, Kritlaq could make out a chest plate fashioned from rows of yellowed animal teeth strung tightly together. Though he carried no weapon, there was an air of malice about him, evident in every move he made. Each step he took was an assault upon the ground itself.
A warning cry rang out from the sentinel iglu at the edge of the settlement. The Tanaina men erupted from the camp, rushing to meet the invader, but Klah Kritlaq held back, watching.
This was no ordinary man. The figure stood head and shoulders above even the tallest among the Tanaina. As the stranger’s massive head swiveled, taking in every detail of the scene, Kritlaq recognized the huge forehead, the heavy brow and jaw, the deep set, smoldering eyes of a creature straight out of legend. A Tunrit. A living, breathing Tunrit. How was that possible?
“Let me see,” said Qilaq.
“Stay down!” said Kritlaq.
The intruder’s pale skin, blackened lips, and slack expression were all tinged with corruption. Not truly alive, thought Kritlaq. A corpse. A dead man striding across the tundra. Kritlaq stared in horror and disbelief.
The Tanaina men surged forward to combat the threat. A raft of spears launched as one. The Tunrit swept his arm in a wide arc, knocking three or four away before they could pierce his flesh. Two other spears, aiming for his neck, stopped in mid-flight and dropped to the ground as if they were stones.
Halting a thrown spear in flight was a feat only a few shamans could accomplish. One must bargain swiftly with the spirit in the wood shaft, asking it to stop flying on the instant. Klah Kritlaq had never been able to achieve the special timing required, and neither had this Tunrit. For the Tunrit had not asked. Kritlaq had heard the shriek of the souls within the arrow shafts as they fell, commanded by a will stronger than their own. This was sorcery.
A sudden realization stabbed Kritlaq through the heart. He was no match for this creature out of the past.
The battle had already begun. The sorcerer swung one battered fist and three men went flying. His other arm spoke the same and three more flew asunder. He stretched out a clawed hand and two men flew into the air before him. He had not even touched them. They hung in the air slowly spinning, shrieking madly.
Then the Tunrit sorcerer flayed them skin from bone.
Klah Kritlaq knew then that he was going to die. His main concern lay with his family. There seemed no way to safeguard his wife or children, but he must try. One thing was certain — he had no desire for his boy to witness what would happen next.
“Qiloq! Run!” He pointed back toward the semi-circle of Tanaina iglus. “Take your sister and get as far away as you can. Go now!”
Klah Kritlaq steadied himself. His spirit guardian Niuqtuabruk, master of the mountain hawks, was always with him. Somewhere up in the blue sky the great turgat awaited his call. When the time came, Kritlaq would not be alone. Such was the promise made to him by Niuqtuabruk when the great spirit had called upon him to become shaman for the Tanaina. The promise would be kept.
Having stripped their skins from the bodies, Vithrok let the two bloody carcasses fall. The lifeless meat thumped into the snow. The shredded skins fluttered away as threadbare rags.
Vithrok grunted satisfaction. There was a certain joy in this, in flexing muscles that had lain idle for centuries. Existing for so long as a pure spirit he had forgotten the feel of physical combat. The solid ground beneath one’s feet, the strength of arm and shoulder, coiling and uncoiling. The smell of blood and the excrement of dying men, the screams of the wounded. It all felt glorious to him.
The rest of the Tanaina men, scattered across the snowy plain, looked upon him with dread and eye-popping terror. They were afraid to get up. He could crush them all in an instant. But that was not what he had come here for.
Suddenly the snow began to swirl a few paces in front of him, taking up an unnatural spiral in the air. Vithrok could smell the shaman’s approach, for his angakua reeked of the Beforetime. It was the scent of every animal that had ever lived or been imagined, the taste of every mouth-watering spice, of all-encompassing possibility and total freedom. This was the thing Vithrok had come searching for, now conveniently delivered directly to him.
Stepping out of the swirl, as if he had appeared from thin air, came a man.
He was tall and thin, dressed in a red and black deerskin parka. The shaman’s head moved sinuously back and forth in a nervous manner setting his hair, parted in the middle and braided on either side, swaying like a pair of black snakes. Feathered amulets and metal tidbits littered the front of the parka. The metal trinkets caught Vithrok’s eye, flashing brightly where they reflected the sunlight.
The shaman was armed with a long staff whose tip bore only a set of feathered tassels.
“I am Klah Kritlaq, of the Tanaina people,” said the shaman.
“Such a petty trick,” said Vithrok, “for someone who bears such a powerful name.”
The sorcerer raised his arms. “You want to see snow move? You’ll see it.” Vithrok reached out his mind, concentrating his will, and two pillars of snow and ice flew twenty paces into the air behind him.
Kritlaq startled at the sight. His men, still watching from the sidelines, gasped in unison. The fountains of snow arched far overhead to fall harmlessly down again, but Kritlaq realized he could just as easily have been killed by them. He imagined those pillars of snow directed at him as bludgeons. He could politely ask the snow to turn aside, but his will was not nearly strong enough to oppose the sorcerer.
Still, Kritlaq would not waste his chance. He raised his staff high.
“Niuqtuabruk!” he called. “Lord of the mountain hawks, hear me. Now is my time of greatest need.”
Blue sparks flew from the feathered tassels.
Vithrok stood waiting, an amused little half-smile curling his blackened lips.
“I call upon you, great spirit!” said Kritlaq. “Bring down vengeance on this foul sorcerer who has slain my brothers.”
A lone squawk cut through the air. And another. And another. A lacey shadow formed above them as the calls of the birds rose higher and higher. The growing shadow resolved into a flock of hawks careening above. The birds circled for a moment amid a tumultuous flapping of wings that sounded like the rush of white water rapids. Then they came down in force, aiming straight for the lone Tunrit in a whirling mass of flashing talons and snapping beaks that would have meant the death of any man.
Vithrok stood his ground. He told the birds they wanted to burn. The birds disagreed, of course. They had no desire to burn. But he made them.
The first hawk burst into flame a finger’s breadth from the sorcerer’s face. Then another and another. Vithrok watched them explode in clusters of fiv
e or six, bursting into colored flame like the fireworks he used to create long ago in the Beforetime. They blazed for an instant then fell to the ground, littering the plain in sizzling clumps of charred flesh and feather.
When they were all gone Vithrok’s dead eyes turned toward Klah Kritlaq.
“You destroy his creatures at your own peril, sorcerer,” said the shaman. “I am not alone. Niuqtuabruk comes!”
The great spirit loomed above them. It filled the entire sky, not with a physical form but with an ethereal presence whose outspread wings stretched to the horizon. Niuqtuabruk gnashed invisible talons together and an incredible clashing sound rent the air. Angered by the destruction of his favored creatures, the turgat let loose a tremendous screech that drove Klah Kritlaq to his knees, his hands clasped over his aching ears.
Kritlaq felt heartened by a wellspring of emotion at the appearance of his guardian spirit. If not confidence, he at least now had a glimmer of hope. He wondered who served as the Tunrit sorcerer’s guardian spirit. Maybe there was a chance for the Tanaina after all, for in his mind there was none greater than Niuqtuabruk, master of the mountain hawks.
“Good,” said Vithrok. “Let him come!”
The Tunrit directed his gaze at the sky, where there had formed a gigantic round bird’s eye as large as the sun. The yellowed eye moved fitfully as it regarded the scene below.
Vithrok chuckled dryly. Now he truly was enjoying himself. “Come on, then!” he cried out. His clawed hand, blackened and burned from where he had pulled down the sun itself, reached up to the sky as if to draw the great bird down. “Come down!”
The great eye blinked.
“You know me, Niuqtuabruk. I am Vithrok! Vithrok, the bringer of the light. Vithrok, also called Death-Bringer!”
In the next moment Kritlaq lost all hope as Niuqtuabruk answered with a mad fluttering of thunderous wings. In an instant the powerful turgat had fled the scene, leaving Kritlaq helpless. His hopes dashed, Kritlaq realized that the sorcerer didn’t need a spirit guardian. A bold creature of the Beforetime, he was practically a turgat himself.
“Get up,” commanded Vithrok. His deadly gaze now fell solely upon Kritlaq.
Kritlaq stepped to his feet. He reached behind him and with a single fluid motion drew and hurled a hunting knife. The metal blade of the dagger, a gift from the white men who had settled a trading post to the south, glinted as it spun end over end.
Vithrok reached out his mind in an attempt to stop the weapon’s flight but found, too late, that the metal blade did not have a soul. Without a spirit with which to barter or command the dagger struck home, hitting Vithrok hard. The knife’s shaft embedded halfway through his neck. He stepped back. The Tanaina men, who were still watching from a safe distance, gave up a cautious cheer.
Vithrok pulled the knife from his neck. There was no blood. Vithrok’s blood had all frozen in his dead veins long ago. He turned the knife over in his hand. He had never seen such a device before. In all the flights of fancy of the Beforetime no one had ever imagined such a thing as steel. This thing had been fashioned by men, men foreign to this land but close enough at hand to have brought their influence here. He would have to consider this new threat carefully. If such men came in force to Nunatsiaq his great plan might be thwarted.
The sorcerer tossed the knife aside.
Kritlaq fought the urge to break and run. He glanced at all his kinsmen standing at the sides of the fray. His eyes met their frightened, sorrowful faces and his resolve began to melt away. There was still one chance for him to save his people. Perhaps a chance, if he were to die for them.
He snapped his attention back to Vithrok and stood firm, his lips pursed, his back straight.
“Now let’s see about that name,” said the Tunrit. He gazed at the shaman with hooded eyes and Kritlaq could not even imagine what he saw.
“A very powerful name indeed,” concluded Vithrok. “You’re a fool to wear it out in the open. True names should always be kept secret, else they prove the shaman’s greatest weakness.”
Kritlaq was suddenly held motionless, unable to struggle in the least little bit as the sorcerer stripped his soul bare.
“I see,” said Vithrok. “A young boy, poorly trained. But of course — weak, insecure in your own mind you seek to impress everyone else with this name. Well, I am impressed.”
Vithrok extended his arms, his clawed fingertips pointing at Kritlaq. “Klah Kritlaq!” he said.
Kritlaq, held immobile, choked in silent torment. Incredible pain sliced his body in a thousand pinpoints as the sorcerer drew the name out from his every pore.
“You should have used a different name,” commented Vithrok. “You should have kept this one hidden.”
Kritlaq screamed as the name was finally torn away.
“Ah, there it is,” said Vithrok. A throbbing, blood-red mass oozed around his fingertips.
Kritlaq fell to the snow, panting.
Vithrok took the name between his two hands, crushing it to a small ball of red electric fire. He released it and the orb hovered near his left shoulder.
Of course the Tanaina men could see nothing of this. They saw only their shaman crumpled to the ground in pain. The bravest among them said, “Kritlaq?”
“No longer,” remarked Vithrok.
Kritlaq, shaken to the core, tried to stand.
Vithrok swung at him with a large stony fist, striking him full in the face.
“You shamans have no idea what you have inside of you,” he said, launching a kick to Kritlaq’s stomach. “You’ve no idea what was lost,” he said, the heel of his mukluk crunching down on Kritlaq’s neck.
“But we’ll have it back. I promise you. I’ll put it all back.”
The shaman’s neck snapped. His last thought was for his wife and children.
As Vithrok tasted the soul, he smelled honeysuckle roses simmering in a field of blazing firegrass. The Tunrit threw back his head and howled. It was the sound of an animal long extinct.
Then he walked away.
“Here it is!” remarked Tikiqaq. It shoveled snow eagerly away from the buried Moon mask.
“Ah, good,” said Alaana. She lifted the wooden mask and carried it to the side, to join the other masks and drums they had rescued from the remains of the collapsed karigi.
The camp buzzed around her, if a group of people scrabbling about in the snow with not a single tent among them could be called a camp. Only a few of their old possessions had been found, and Alaana hoped they had enough skins and runners for a few sleds at least. There were so few dogs; the journey to the bay would be difficult.
“Kritlaq! Kritlaq!” The tupilaq abandoned its search, and began spinning madly around.
“Stop it,” said Alaana. “I told you to forget about Kritlaq.”
“Kritlaq dead!” said the tupilaq.
“Leave it.”
“I hear him scream.” Tiki fluttered helplessly around the ruined tent.
“Wait a moment Alaana,” said Quixaaragon. “This little dead thing is linked to Klah Kritlaq. But why Kritlaq?”
Alaana paused, somewhat embarrassed to admit this to Quixaaragon. He seemed such a noble creature who would surely look down upon acts of petty vengeance. “Yes, well, I created it for the purpose of killing Klah Kritlaq. It was a mistake--”
“But Old Manatook killed Kritlaq,” said Quixaaragon. “I saw him do it.”
“The name passed to another shaman,” explained Alaana.
“Of course. Among the Tainana. I remember. I learned of this while on the Moon.”
Tiki plopped to the ground. The seal mouth said, “I hear him scream! He scream!”
It rolled over and raised its ratty head. The raven’s beak squawked, “Dead, he’s dead. Dead.”
“Settle down, Tiki,” said Alaana. “What happened? Can you tell?”
The tupilaq shook itself, like a seal just come out of water. The raven’s beak spoke more calmly. “Old, very old. Tunrit.”
“The Tunrit are all dead, long dead,” said Alaana. “You’re not making any sense.”
“He might be making perfect sense,” mused Quixaaragon. “The sorcerer is a Tunrit.”
The tupilaq became excited again. “Tunrit! Tunrit! Vithrok!”
“Vithrok?” repeated Alaana. “I’ve heard that word before.”
“It’s important,” said Quixaaragon. “Important that you remember.”
“It was a long time ago,” said Alaana. “Soon after I was called to be the shaman. Old Manatook had convinced a stone to show its memories to me. It seemed as if we were traveling back into the past, but it was just the long memories of the stone. It remembered the Tunrit and their struggles in the forever dark. And then it showed me the Beforetime. Just a quick flash, but I’ll never forget it. And there was this word Vithrok. I didn’t know what it could possibly mean but it frightened me. Why should I hear that word?”
Quixaaragon shook its delicate head.
“Do you know what it means?” asked Alaana.
“Yes. The Tunrit left this world ages past. Their language is dead and gone. But I am older even than that.”
“So tell me!”
“The truth,” said Quixaaragon, “It means ‘The Truth.’ Do you think it could be the sorcerer’s true name?”
“You tell me. You ask a lot of questions. When you used to perch on Old Manatook’s shoulder you acted as if you knew all the answers.”
“Oh, that was all a show for Manatook. I wasn’t going to let that crusty old shaman get the better of me. But with you it’s different. I don’t need pretense and illusion. So I ask again, do you think it’s his true name?”
“I think it’s a weapon,” said Alaana. “Another weapon. Just like you. Don’t you see? There is a plan! This proves it. The name was given to me, and we’ll use it against him.”
“Don’t be so certain,” remarked the familiar. “The Truth. That’s a powerful name indeed.”
“Is it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Kritlaq is dead,” said Tiki sadly.
