Blade Kin

by David Farland

  “If you hunt for happiness in the future, like some human, then you will need my father’s training. I wish you peace like a meadow, joy above the mountains.”

  ***

  Chapter 12: Balance Lessons

  Tull slept throughout the day, while the Pwi guarded the town in an effort to keep the mayor from escaping. Chaa did not come home until late afternoon, and by then his eyes were red, with dark circles beneath.

  After a quick dinner, Tull went to Chaa’s spirit room and asked, “As a Spirit Walker, can you use your power to find the mayor?”

  Chaa was sitting cross-legged on the mat on the floor. He looked up. “I could try, but it is hard,” Chaa answered. “If he wants to remain hidden, his spirit will make itself invisible to me.”

  “Do you know where he is now? Have you seen where he would hide during one of your Spirit Walks.”

  Chaa hesitated. “No,” he said. “His spirit is dark. On my Spirit Walks, I avoid touching the souls of corrupted men, as you must. Long ago Terrazin Dragontamer showed us the folly of that path.”

  “So you have never walked Garamon’s future?”

  “No.”

  “Then how shall I find him?”

  “Look inside yourself. Perhaps you already know part of the answer,” Chaa said. “Last night you began to open your spirit eyes, and you saw a slaver of the Blade Kin. He may be the answer. If you find him, you will find the mayor nearby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I am not certain,” Chaa said, “But you touched the Land of Shapes, and there you saw something from the future. Your spirit eyes knew that you would be hunting Garamon soon, and so it showed you something.”

  “It showed me the answer to a problem before I knew of the problem?”

  “I believe so,” Chaa said.

  “I know where I saw him,” Tull said. “He was on the hill above my cabin.”

  “Yet, do you know when he will be there?” Chaa asked. He became silent a moment, and hung his shoulders as if tired. Through the smoke hole in the roof, Tull could hear some children laughing on the street outside.

  Among the Pwi, if a man seemed too eager to purchase something, the Pwi had the habit of growing silent for an extended period of time, making the offender wait. Chaa adopted such a silence now, letting Tull know that his eagerness was not appreciated.

  After three minutes, Chaa continued, “In the Land of Shapes, there are no boundaries of time. You must connect with the slaver from your vision. Connecting is much harder than simply viewing, for you must take on the person’s thoughts and memories. Still, it is not so complex as taking a Spirit Walk.”

  Chaa put his hand to Tull’s head. “Your spirit eyes are still struggling to open. Rest now. We can try in a few days.”

  “I am ready now,” Tull said.

  “It is too soon for you to take another journey in the Land of Shapes. You don’t know the dangers,” Chaa countered. “Your spirit eyes are just beginning to open, and for the first few times that you journey in the Land of Shapes, each time you see it, it will change again. Rest for a few more days before such a journey.”

  “Are you afraid of the spirit eaters? Could Garamon himself attack me in the Land of Shapes?”

  “No, I am not afraid of him. But there are worse things than spirit eaters—” Chaa said, “things … I cannot explain.”

  “Tell me about these enemies,” Tull said, hoping to learn just a little more.

  Chaa struggled for words. “When you drank the seers’ tea, part of you was opened. I showed you the Land of Shapes, and there you saw the hollow of your soul—the place where your dark urges reside, and you saw darkness streaming out, trying to escape.

  “Dancing over that, you saw the flames of your spirit, the pale fronds of lightning that eat the darkness as it tries to escape, and all of these reside in a jelly, the thing we call ‘the clot’ of the soul.

  “Yes, the colored jelly,” Tull said, delighted to know that it had a name.

  “The lightning of your soul does continual battle with the hollow of your soul,” Chaa said, “eating the darkness before it can escape. The lightning of your soul is your inner beauty struggling to break down that darkness.”

  “And the clot?” Tull asked.

  “Is only the way your spirit eyes see the body that it wears. The colors in your clot are emotions, and they form a cloud over both the hollow of your soul and the lightning of your soul.”

  Chaa poured himself a drink from a nearby pitcher. “For most people, the hollow of the soul and the lightning of the soul seek some kind of balance. The pale lightning does not overwhelm the dark, and the hollow of the soul never outgrows itself. But for some, the dark hollow streams out constantly and smothers the lightning. Men who are thus afflicted lose consciousness of their own inner beauty, their own divinity, and they will send their darkness outward, struggling to overshadow the lightning in the souls of others. Seldom does even a small frond of lightning take root in them again. Such creatures become spirit eaters.”

  “How do I kill them?” Tull asked.

  Chaa pondered a moment. “You can’t kill such things. You can only resist them. Rather than kill them, I would have you remember their beauty. The divine fire that is in you also burns in them, though it is hidden.”

  Tull let his eyes wander across the tiny room to the cabinets where Chaa kept his drugs. “You said that sometimes these spirit eaters are men,” Tull said. “Do I know any of them?”

  “You do not have to be a Spirit Walker to know their names.”

  “Garamon was one,” Tull said. “And my father?” Chaa nodded. “But what of Fava? She has almost no hollow to her soul.”

  “That is why I named her Fava, after the pear tree, most generous of trees. She will only give light to others.”

  Tull sat thinking for a moment. He had been surprised at the size of the hollow of his own soul, so large in comparison to Fava’s. “What of the birds and animals, what of time and the future?” Tull asked. “I saw nothing of them. I saw so little.”

  “This is true,” Chaa said. “The spirit eyes open slowly, and you caught only a glimpse of the Land of Shapes. It is much larger than what you saw, incredibly so, and it will change each time you enter for the first two or three times. There are beings there, neither hollow nor lightning nor clot, which can influence you, yet I cannot name them. Some would harm you, and some would help. Most do neither.

  “Time there is a river, which you can stop at will.

  “Animals and plants and even stones exist there, much in the same form as humans. You must learn to value them, for the divine light shines in them also.

  “I will send you back to the Land of Shapes soon, and you will see more, begin learning how to connect—to perceive the thoughts and hearts of others. Yet even connecting is only a small art. Connecting is to Spirit Walking what a child’s crawl is to dance. Until you have learned to connect to others, I cannot begin to teach you how to walk the future. Until then, rest.”

  Tull asked, “But when you Spirit Walk, do you need rest? I’ve seen the Sorcerers of the Blade Kin lying near death, just as you do when you take your Spirit Walks.”

  “Taking a Spirit Walk requires concentration, focus,” Chaa said. “The past is immutable, a straight line to what has been. We can relive it, but we cannot change it, and so viewing the past is easy. However, when we come to the future we see that it is vast and complex. The great tree branches in so many places, that exploring it takes great concentration. It is only when we leave our bodies, become tied to the past and the present by only the tiniest thread, that we focus enough to create the future.”

  “Create?”

  Chaa frowned, “Yes, create is the right word. The future exists without us, yet each moment offers us the potential for change, and so we must organize, create the future.” He stretched, looked up.

  “Tell me more,” Tull said.

  Chaa sighed, rubbed his eyes. “I want you to walk home n
ow, in the dark. Take thirty seconds between each step, and consider where best to place your foot—remembering that each blade of grass represents a life as vigorous as your own, each insect or worm you crush has a life that it regards as equal in value to your own. I want you to walk home,” Chaa said, “with supreme caution. Be considerate of every step you take. Let the peace that is within you guide the tiniest footfall, so that you pass gently.”

  “You want me to walk home, without crushing any grass or killing any worms?”

  Chaa nodded solemnly. “A Spirit Walker gains great power, and with that power he can crush a man as easily as a worm. Restraint and good intent—these two lie at the heart of the art of Spirit Walking. Until you practice these two traits, I dare not teach you any more.”

  Tull got up wearily. Fava and Wayan were already home, and the walk should have only taken a few minutes, yet when Tull left Chaa’s hogan, Tull removed his moccasins and walked carefully in the full moonlight, staying to the most worn parts of the trail, using his toes to move aside blades of grass and probe for the limp bodies of night crawlers.

  The journey home took until dawn.

  ***

  Chapter 13: Phylomon’s Return

  In the early afternoon, Phylomon the Starfarer tacked into the long fjord at the mouth of Smilodon Bay and began sailing upriver to the town itself; the sails sagged once they escaped the open sea, as did his shoulders, as he eased into calmer waters.

  Even in the cold wind, the ancient Starfarer wore little. For protection from the wind and cold, he relied upon his pale-blue symbiote, which covered him like a second skin.

  On the hills above the fjord, huge redwoods overshadowed the river so that it felt as calm as a lagoon. Woodpeckers tapped the trees and gray squirrels and jays chattered to announce his presence. Scandal the innkeeper lay in back of the boat under a tarp, snoring.

  Phylomon recalled other trips he’d made to Smilodon Bay, hundreds of years ago. He’d been taking seritactates then, and the drugs had let him record memories flawlessly.

  Eight hundred years ago, Smilodon Bay had been nothing. On his first visit he had come to see how the woodland mastodons that his father had introduced were faring. The redwoods had been younger, hardier.

  Two hundred years later, he’d sailed here again, bringing a load of cloth to a Neanderthal fishing village. The natives painted themselves blue when they saw Phylomon, and worshiped him as a god. On that warm spring day the Pwi were smoking fish, slowly roasting them on twigs along an embankment. Oily blue smoke swirled among the trees and hung heavy near the ground. A shaman had complained bitterly to Phylomon that battles with slavers had killed all the old men, so now there were not enough old men to teach the young boys. It was a blatant attempt to get Phylomon to stay, to share his knowledge, but Phylomon had left anyway.

  One hundred and seventy years later, when he returned, the village had crumbled, hogans rotted into the ground. Not even a circle of stones showed where campfires had been, and he had wondered if he had stayed for a season to help the old shaman, teach the young how to protect themselves from the slavers, if perhaps the village would have remained.

  At that time Phylomon had been a warrior with his wife and sons, leading a band of Pwi, hoping to someday attack Bashevgo. Among the ranks was a promising Pwi, only a child really, with rippling cords for muscles, rage in his eyes. Terrazin Dragontamer.

  It had been in this camp that Terrazin first called a dragon from its nest—a young brown tyrant bird that dove into camp, beady purple eyes staring from a blood-red serpentine head, waving its venomous horn as it glared at the Pwi.

  The psychic link between Terrazin and his animal guide had been frightening to behold. Phylomon had looked in the small dragon’s eyes even then and recognized that they were familiar. They were Terrazin’s eyes. The similarity, the bond between the two creatures, had shocked Phylomon.

  It should not have surprised me, Phylomon thought, that Terrazin would become so ruthless. It should not have surprised me that the psychic warrior went mad, killed so many.

  Phylomon’s blue skin tightened, as if preparing for attack. The ancient symbiote felt his distress. I am not afraid, Phylomon told the symbiote, I am only old. I feel older than my thousand years.

  When Phylomon came within sight of the city, gulls and cormorants spun in lazy circles by the shore. The watchmen at the inn above town spotted Phylomon, waved, and shot one of the nine-inch cannons. A colossal waste of gunpowder here in the wilderness.

  In the back of the boat, Scandal woke, gazed at the city through the soft haze of the sea wind, grinning to be home again. “Hah,” Scandal laughed, “they’ve shot a cannon for us, a fine welcome!”

  Phylomon watched the black stones of the houses and inns. A deep unease settled on him, something he could feel but not explain. “How well do you know Tull?” Phylomon asked. As he said the words, he realized the source of the unease. Tull was from this town, and Terrazin had gained his power here. Tull had taken the sea serpent as his animal guide, Terrazin the dragon. Both creatures formed by the Starfarers. An odd coincidence, but one Phylomon found it hard to shake.

  “Why, I’ve known him for eight years,” Scandal said.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Of course,” Scandal answered. “He’s honest. I sent him south to White Rock with a shipment of beer when he was fifteen, and he never so much as cracked a keg.”

  Phylomon glanced back at him. “How easily can he harm others?”

  Scandal sat, taken aback, and Phylomon could tell that Scandal did not speak because he wanted to know the right answer in advance. Scandal sighed. “He scares me a bit, I suppose. You know, you can live next to someone all your life and never really know him. I love that boy, but when we were in Craal, after the Blade Kin whipped him, Tull could have walked away quietly. Yet he had to grab a sword and kill every single one of his guards. He has a strong sense of justice.”

  “When you looked in his eyes as he killed, what did you see?”

  Scandal squirmed in his seat. Phylomon stared, forced him to answer.

  “I guess I saw him butchering those slavers. They weren’t his equal in a fight. He wanted more than blood, more than justice. He was so relaxed, like a man who has just made love. My wife used to say that Tull had ‘Revolution in his eyes,’ but I pitied anyone who met him while he held that naked sword. I’ll be honest. His blood lust scares me.”

  “You love him, but he scares you?” Phylomon asked. “Me too.” Phylomon pondered a moment, considered the similarities, tried to put the thought from his mind.

  The cannon shot brought people running, and as the little sailboat swept into town, Phylomon searched the banks, but did not see Tull. The mayor’s house had burned to the ground in their absence, and the ashes still smoldered. A crowd of Pwi ran north to cross the redwood bridge, shouting that Phylomon had come to town.

  At Moon Dance Inn that evening, the beer flowed freely and a crowd gathered around Phylomon. Scandal sat on a table next to a cage that carried a sour-smelling “bird” from Hotland, and began telling his and Phylomon’s story. The bird was more than half lizard and hung from the top of its cage by its feet, the claws on the end of its scaly fingers gripping the bars. Scandal fed it sweetmeats from his tray as he talked.

  Nothing Scandal said seemed to astonish the crowd, though the innkeeper worked hard at it. News of Craal armies a thousand miles away did not impress them—no matter how large the armies.

  The villagers had already heard from Tull about how the Creators had formed small humans and were experimenting in genocide. Yet the Pwi did not fear it, and Phylomon realized he should have known the Pwi could not generate much fear of the Creators, for the Creators had never attacked before. No evil kwea had been established in the Pwi’s minds.

  “So we got down to Storm Hold,” Scandal said, describing the last leg of their trip, “hoping to get a little rest, and the snow was falling a foot deep in places. You would think that under
such conditions, folks would be happy to see us, honest folks escaping Craal, but no. Phylomon and I got no welcome there, and I swear that half the men in the room were pirate slavers, wintering out of Bashevgo.”

  Storm Hold, being on the edge of the Rough bordering Craal, had always been rife with shady dealing. But Scandal said, “I’m telling you boys, the town was filled with greedy bastards—not just pirates, but merchants who were just as bad as pirates, men that couldn’t be slimier if they bathed in snot. You wouldn’t catch me dead trying to walk into that town alone. Ayaah, things have changed. When I was a kid, Storm Hold was a fast ally, and a strong one. Now, it’s an outpost of Craal in all but name.”

  Suddenly, Phylomon could feel an electricity in the room, a tension that had not been there before. Though stories of distant armies could not faze the Pwi, this small betrayal close to home caused considerable dismay. Tull entered the front door of the inn with Fava and a human girl. Phylomon motioned for them to come sit, and they pressed through the crowd.

  “It’s good to see you,” Tull said to Phylomon, clasping his arm.

  Phylomon looked deeply into Tull’s eyes. “Good to see you,” he said mechanically. He saw no dragons in the boy’s eyes, but something had changed. “I understand congratulations are in order. You married since last I saw you?”

  “Yes,” Fava answered, and as the three seated, Scandal told the crowd how he and Phylomon had stolen a boat to escape Storm Hold.

  The two girls, Fava and a dark-haired human, sat with straight backs, muscles tensed. Phylomon could tell that they were uneasy around him. As the last of the Starfarers, he was more legend to them than man. Yet Tull remained open, familiar.

  Phylomon said, “I’ve been gathering news from your townsfolk. It seems you made it here with the serpent eggs intact. I’m glad. I suppose I should feel flattered that the Creators thought highly enough of me to send one of their messengers to kill me—though you and Chaa made short work of the beast. Still, it established some bad kwea among the Pwi. They will see the Creators as a threat now.”