Find your own truth s-3

by Robert N. Charrette

  There was little room in the circle; his crossed legs nearly touched the opal. He reached out, laying the fingers of both hands on the gemstone. Pushing himself into trance, he felt for Dog's presence. He wanted his totem's strength to add to the gathered power, but the fickle presence remained aloof. As you wish, old hound. With the focus stone and the ritual, there would be magic enough. Rikki took up the harmony chant in his squeaky, shrill voice while Manx's flute purred a haunting counter-melody. Distantly, he heard his own voice begin the transformation song. Sam let himself drift, gathering power. Anchoring himself through the opal, he gathered the strands to weave them into a shining pattern. Under his shirt Sam's fossil tooth thumped against his chest, and he merged its aural image into the configuration, enmeshing it in the net. Foundation complete, he reached toward distant influences and warped them into conformation with his will.

  Clothed in scintillant power, he turned to Janice. She was only an aural image of ill-defined shape. Beneath the surface he felt the lurking darkness of the wendigo nature warring with the struggling but weakening human soul. He wrapped her in the power, co-cooning her like a caterpillar. Soon, he sang, she would emerge a butterfly.

  When he called her forth, she made the ritual responses. Obeying his order, she stood and crossed from the larger to the smaller outline, skirting the central area as she went, then lay down again. Sam felt the surging power and struggled to guide it, trying with all his might to mold it to his desire. For all his attempts to control it, the power remained unfocused as they reached the crucial point of the song. Then the threshold had been crossed, the passage made, and there was nothing to do but sing the conclusion of the ritual. The voice of the flute softened to silence, while the drum, steady and insistent, shifted to a new rhythm that called Sam back from the realms of power.

  He opened his eyes. Janice lay to his left, overflowing from the smaller stone outline. She remained a wendigo. All the preparation and sacrifice had been in vain. The ritual had failed.

  A screech, seeming to encompass Sam's despair and rage, shredded the night and ripped the music into silence.

  A huge humanoid shape bounded from the darkness to stand hunched at the edge of the medicine circle.

  Its long, ape-like arms flailed. One gnarled hand held a tree limb that it swept back and forth, scattering the stones of the outer ring.

  Two more creatures like the first shambled from the darkness to also stand at the edge of the broken circle. All three were massive, alike in general but idiosyn-cratically different in particulars. Covered in rough hides studded with irregular patches of dermal bone, the creatures were three meters of lumpy muscles. Asymmetric horns crowned misshapen heads that wobbled as they turned to scan the clearing. Bloodshot eyes gleamed evilly in the flickering magelight.

  The first creature flung its tree limb toward Sam. The missile struck the ground a meter short, gouging the earth and plowing through the stones of the ring to come to rest at Sam's feet. Shrieking, the monster charged. Scrambling out of its way, Sam jumped to the side, scattering colored sand as he fled the ritual circle.

  He took cover in a jumble of boulders. Already there was Gray Otter, crouched with her SCK100 machine pistol in her hand. Sam didn't know if he had stumbled onto her watch station or if she had returned upon hearing the ruckus. Whichever, he was glad she was there. He wished Ghost and Hart were there as well.

  Looking back at the clearing, he saw the creatures rampaging about, kicking through the sand paintings and heaving rocks randomly into the surrounding dark. The mage-light faded away and night dropped back onto the mountain.

  Rikki crawled up beside Sam and Gray Otter. "What are those things?"

  "Dzoo-noo-qua," Gray Otter said softly.

  "Doo-zoo-what?" Rikki asked.

  "Name doesn't matter, Rikki. They're trouble." V'Big trouble," Gray Otter agreed.

  Sam searched the darkness for any sign of his sister or the other shaman.' 'What happened to Janice and Manx?''

  "Dunno," Rikki replied. "Ain't healthy out there. They must've decided the same."

  A sudden burst of light illuminated the clearing. Someone had popped a flare. Sam hoped it was Ghost's doing, or Hart's. They didn't need Salish-Shidhe troops complicating things now.

  The harsh white glare let him see what had happened to Manx. Fleeing the attack, she had not chosen her direction wisely. One of the dzoo had her cornered at the edge of the clearing where the slope fell sharply away down the mountain. The creature advanced on her menacingly, while Manx responded with flaring darts of arcane power that ripped into the dzoo.

  Instead of howling in pain or breaking off its advance to seek cover, the creature merely lowered its head and bulled forward. The magical energy shed from its shoulders like water. With nowhere to dodge, Manx could not 'evade the sweep of the monster's long arm, which gathered her in. As soon as it laid its second hand on her, she began to scream. It didn't bite or claw or squeeze her, but she screamed. Her hair faded from its midnight black as her struggles weakened. Her skin sagged and wrinkled. Clothes that had hugged her full-fleshed body flapped loosely as she struck and kicked. The creature seemed to grow larger, but that was an illusion born of dread. At least Sam hoped it was. The dzoo raised its head and howled at the moon, and the joy in that cry chilled Sam thoroughly.

  With a howl of his own, he stood up. Gathering the power, he felt the mask of Dog descend over his features. He bared his teeth and cast the energy in a stun-bolt at the dzoo. The thing staggered, dropping the husk that was all that remained of Manx.

  The dzoo turned its bloodshot eyes toward him. Ivory reflected in the flare's light as it grinned at Sam. With a grunt, the creature charged.

  The chatter from Otter's gun drowned the sounds of Rikki scrambling away. Sam hoped the Rat shaman was seeking a better location from which to cast his own spells. Though tired by his first casting, Sam pre 96

  Robert N. Charrette pared a second to follow up Otter's fire. Though on target, her attack had little effect. Bullets sparked from the creature's dermal armor to ricochet into the night. Sam was still gathering his power when the dzoo reached their refuge. With a back-handed blow, it sent Otter tumbling away. Sam jumped back but landed badly, his ankle twisting under him, and he fell. The dzoo grinned. Dark, spadelike nails gouged the loam as the creature groped for him. The drooling, leering face came closer, and he felt the thing's fetid breath on his skin. Then the fang-mouthed visage was rising, a look of stupid confusion replacing the former avid anticipation.

  Janice had come to Sam's rescue. In a display of phenomenal strength, she lifted the dzoo over her head. The thing struggled, but her grip on its dermal armor remained firm until she slammed the creature into the ground. The dzoo whuffed out its breath and flailed spasmodically with its limbs. As one dirty foot caught Janice at the side of her knee, her leg buckled and she fell within reach of the dzoo's arms. Clawed fingers raked at her, digging furrows of blood. The wounds were healing even as the dzoo half leaped, half crawled onto her. The two titans kicked and gouged as they rolled over, locked in one another's grip. Biting and spitting, the heaving melee of fur and leathery hide pitched about until the combatants finally rolled out of the flare's range and into the darkness.

  The struggle's savage fury almost drowned out Ghost's shout. Without thinking Sam ducked, diving to the ground and rolling. His quick reaction saved him from having his head split open by the tree trunk that came smashing down where he had just stood. He was not fast enough to escape unscathed, however. Sam's arm blazed with pain as the weapon shredded his sleeve and scraped skin and flesh from his right arm. Dazed, he staggered to his feet, then fell. He was too groggy to focus a spell, and his arm was numb from the shock. His gun wouldn't have done any good anyway. The tranq bullets wouldn't have slowed the thing down fast enough, even if the needles managed to penetrate the dermal bone. He looked up into the hungry face of a second dzoo-noo-qua.

  Ghost hit the creature hard with a cross-body strike to th
e back of the knees. Surprised, it began to topple backward. Ghost hit the ground first, but rolled away before the bulk of the dzoo could pin him. The Indian came up with both Ingrams out, and the guns spat lethally. He concentrated his fire on the creature's neck, where the armored plating was light. Bullets chewed through the bulky muscle, mauling meat until the neck was half-severed. Pumping blood, the dzoo-noo-qua rose and charged Ghost, who evaded its clumsy rush. The dzoo blundered past him, crashing into the brush. Its howling trailed off as it tumbled downslope, ending with a solid thump as the creature crashed into a tree that refused to yield. The clearing fell silent.

  Ghost looked Sam over and nodded, seemingly satisfied that he would survive. Otter limped her way to them. She was bruised but had sustained no serious injuries. She had Rikki in tow; he was grimier than usual, but unhurt. Hart arrived at a full run, weapon in one hand and spell energy glowing around the other. At Ghost's "It's over," she let the spell fade away and dropped her weapon to hang from its sling. She threw her arms around Sam, who returned the embrace. "I'm all right," he told her. "I was too far away," she said. "Janice?" "I don't know. She was fighting one of the dzoo-noo-qua. They rolled that way into the brush." "That fight's over, too," Ghost announced. "Janice?" Sam said. Ghost said nothing.

  Fearing the worst, Sam bolted in the direction he had seen the fight heading. Hart raced at his side. They did not have to go far, for the combatants' struggle had taken them no more than a dozen meters from the clearing.

  Janice was alive. Her wounds were closing as Sam watched hi shocked silence. It was not the magical healing that shocked him, but what she was doing.

  Janice was eating her former opponent.

  When she realized she had an audience, she stopped and looked up. At first, Sam saw no recognition in her eyes, only hunger. Then the feral gleam faded a bit, and she slunk away into the shadows. Stunned, he didn't follow. Hart laid her hand on his bruised arm, but he was too numb to flinch.

  The beast was rising.

  Unnoticed, Father Rinaldi had joined them. "This is very bad, Sam. These dzoo-noo-qua, they are not animals."

  Sam refused to believe that. "Paterson's Paranormal Animals lists dzoo-noo-qua as nonsentient. And the Salish-Shidhe Council offers a bounty on them as vermin."

  "The Council also offers a bounty on wendigos," Rinaldi pointed out.

  The priest's cruel reminder made Sam clench his jaw to repress a sob. Books and bounties weren't always right. Paterson's guide also said that dzoo-noo-qua were trolls that had been turned into something subhuman by an infection of the transforming HMHVV virus. Some researchers thought the same virus turned orks into wendigos, but what did the scientists really know about magical beings?

  Rinaldi and Hart coaxed Sam away from the corpse of the dzoo-noo-qua and got him back to the clearing. The priest began to dress Sam's wound. As he was finishing he said sadly, "I'll have to talk with Brothers Mark and Paulus about this."

  Sam nodded without meeting Rinaldi's gaze. "Do what you have to do, Father. I understand." "I hope you do, Sam."

  Another nod. "Each of us does what he must do." The priest eyed him strangely but said nothing. Gray Otter appeared at Rinaldi's shoulder with an offer to guide him back to the metroplex. The priest thanked her and began to gather his things. Over his bent back, Otter caught Sam's eyes. He mouthed the word "slow," and she nodded. Each of us does what he must do. As Rinaldi and Otter departed, Dodger stepped up to Sam's side. Sam didn't wonder how or why the decker had come to the clearing; he was just glad that Dodger was there.

  "Time to fall back and regroup?" Dodger asked. "You know what to do, Dodger." "Verily. Implementation shall take but an elementary command. Fear not, Sir Twist. The good brothers shall receive their recall orders before the padre can reach them. He, too, shall receive a summons home. They shall not be around to interfere." "Will they suspect?"

  "For shame, Sir Twist. Though I cannot bespeak the activity of their paranoia, I assure you that they shall not see through my deception until they confront their superior in Rome. By then it will be too late for them to interfere. There is, however, another matter." Sam didn't know what could be worse than tonight's disaster, but Dodger's grim expression promised more calamity. "I don't want to know, so you'd better tell me."

  PART 2

  Look Within Yourself

  The cottage was Hart's private hideaway in the mountains north of Saint Helens. Dodger hadn't wanted to use it, suggesting instead that they hold their conference somewhere in the woods. Pointing out the threat of inclement weather, Sam had overruled him. The air in the one-room cabin was too warm for comfort, but the windows had to be shut against the driving rain. The rising scent of damp earth and wood competed with the sweaty odor of tightly packed people. The table that normally dominated the cabin's center was shoved to one side and piled with the runners' gear, but that still left the room crowded. Sam's agitated attempts at pacing only made it worse. Hart and Dodger were constantly having to remove their feet from his path or have them trod upon by the distracted Sam. At length he halted, facing the blank log wall that was the cabin's back.

  "It's not doing any good putting it off, Sam. None of us likes it any better than you do." Hart's voice was full of concern for him, her tone belying the content. "We all wanted to see Janice saved, but it looks like only one way is left."

  "No." Sam spun and faced her. "There is a way to defeat the wendigo. I felt it during the ritual. I know it's still possible for her to change."

  "Even with Rinaldi's help, you couldn't design a ritual to do it.''

  "We didn't have the power." "We've been through that."

  "And I still say that the ritual failed because I'm not powerful enough. We need a stronger shaman to perform the ritual."

  Hart exchanged a glance with Dodger, then sighed. "When we started this, you wanted to get other people out of it."

  "That was before I knew I couldn't do it alone."

  "You couldn't do it with Rikki and Manx, either."

  "The ritual never really drew on their power. Besides, they were just small-time. I picked them because they would go along, not because they were really good shamans.

  "Who could we get?" Sam found his companions' faces closed to him. "Come on, you two. You've both been in the shadow trade a lot longer than I have. Who do you know? Who's the most powerful shaman around?"

  "So you think power's the only problem now."

  ' 'I think it's the critical factor.'' The ritual had been well designed. What else could have been lacking? "So who might have enough power? How about the archdruid of England?''

  Hart chuckled sourly. "An unlikely source of help, considering last year's events."

  "Don't you think they'd be grateful for our help in disposing of their renegades?" Sam asked.

  Shaking his head, Dodger said, ' 'I believe their point of view would be somewhat different. Considering our complicity in abetting the escape of a certain wendigo, they might actually align us with the villains against." Turning to Hart he asked, "What about Dr. Kano at Cal-Tech?"

  She shook her head. "A theoretician, mostly."

  "Well, Mistress, is there not a theory problem as well?"

  "Our local expert seems to think not, but I'm afraid there still exists a serious question of practical knowledge." She turned to Sam and gave him a sad smile.

  "Not to slight your talent and diligence, but you haven't been a practicing shaman for very long. Mastering the Art, whatever the tradition, does not come quickly or easily. The problem with the ritual may not even be what you think it is. You might have all the raw power you need and just not know how to channel it. This transformation magic of yours may just be too subtle."

  "And how would I know?"

  "By learning more."

  "Janice doesn't have the time."

  "Always in a hurry."

  Sam thought that remark unfair. "I spent a year working with Rinaldi to develop that ritual. I'd hardly call that rushing."

&nb
sp; "But it didn't work."

  "It could have worked. It should have." Visions of Janice and the dead dzoo-noo-qua swam before his eyes. "We've got to hurry now, whether I want to or not. Janice is succumbing to the wendigo nature. We've got to find someone who can do the ritual properly as soon as possible. We've got to enlist the help of a shaman who has the power, experience, and skill we need."

  Hart gave an exasperated sigh. "Why not just ask for Howling Coyote? He certainly fits…"

  A sudden scrape and the crash of Dodger's chair on the floor interrupted her remark. Finishing his abrupt rise, the elf stalked to the door and flung it open. He stared out at the rain.

  Sam looked to Hart, who looked as surprised as he felt. "What's the matter, Dodger? Do you know this Howling Coyote?"

  The decker's voice was soft, almost inaudible over the sound of the downpour. "I think he's dead. 'Twould be better 'twere so."

  When it was obvious Dodger would say no more on the subject, Sam whispered to Hart, "Do you know why he reacted like that?" She shook her head.

  "What could it be about this Howling Coyote? The name's familiar, but I can't seem to place it."

  "Been neglecting the historical side of your studies again?" Sam could see by her half smile that she noticed the heat that would be reddening his cheeks above his beard. "Is the name Daniel Coleman any more familiar?"

  ' 'The Ghost Dance prophet?'' "None other," Dodger announced, forcing himself back into the conversation. His back remained turned to them. "Coleman was a charismatic firebrand, the leading light of the movement that resulted in the end of the United States of America, the Dominion of Canada, and the Republic of Mexico. A very influential villain. I heard him speak in the broadcast in which the Ghost Dancers took responsibility for the volcanic eruption that buried Los Alamos."

  "He must have made quite an impression," Hart said. "You couldn't have been more than a kid."