The Shadow of Everything Existing

by Ken Altabef

  Tornarssuk was knocked back. The snapping tail had cut several ribbons of fur from both of his cheeks. His red rage knew no bounds now. If the Disemboweler wanted a fight to the death, it would have one.

  Tornarssuk rolled on his side and charged on all four legs, head lowered as a battering ram. His broad head launched into Erlaveersinioq, catching it in the midsection. The Great Bear swung a massive paw that knocked his opponent down. The vast ceremonial tent of the Yupikut was crushed by the falling turgat, scattering masks and drums in its wake. Tornarssuk did not concern himself with the people now. He had no energy to waste on benevolence or pity. A battle with the Disemboweler required all of his strength and concentration. Rationality was put aside to make room for pure animal fury.

  Nursing his wounds, full of rage, he charged again and again, claws flashing, teeth snapping. He had taken Erlaveersinioq down by sheer savagery. The two vicious dog heads on either side of the Disemboweler’s face sough to return his bestial rage in kind, snarling and snapping. One of the hounds caught the Great Bear’s ear in its mouth, and bit its tip cleanly off.

  Erlaveersinioq dipped its head down and under, digging its horns into Tornarssuk’s belly. Tornarssuk pulled away. A pair of gaping wounds in his abdomen began to bleed white light, the pure energy of his spirit. This luminous spume sprayed outward in a torrent and where it met the physical world it set even the snow and ice to fire! White fire!

  People ran screaming, some of them alight with the spiritual flame.

  This did not concern Tornarssuk now. His pain was extreme, unlike anything he had ever felt before. It occurred to him that he might well lose this fight.

  He slashed at Erlaveersinioq with renewed fury. Before the Disemboweler could counter, Tornarssuk had its neck in his massive jaw. Tornarssuk bit down hard. With Erlaveersinioq’s neck locked in his mouth the two dog heads were caught in a useless position off to the side.

  Erlaveersinioq raked at him with all six clawed hands. Tornarssuk bit down hard. The jaws of the Great Bear had been tested before, and if bears were known for anything it was holding on with their teeth, despite anything else around them. He bit down hard, choking the Disemboweler’s scream in its own throat. If he could hold on long enough, he would win.

  Tornarssuk bit down hard...

  Concealed among the icy cliffs, Civiliaq watched the scene below in horror. He saw the two towering turgats locked in deadly battle above the camp, white fire still spewing from Tornarssuk’s ripped hide. He saw Manatook and Kritlaq exchanging blows down on the plain below.

  Wolf Head stood beside him watching the battle silently, seething with impatience. If they were to join the battle, it must be soon.

  But Civiliaq was drowning in doubt. Would Raven answer his call? Would he assist them in this struggle against Vithrok’s allies? He had to admit that he thought it unlikely. Tulukkaruq’s loyalties seemed to lie with the enemy camp. But one never could tell with the Raven. One never could tell.

  “Aid me Lord Tulukkaruq!” he intoned. “Dark bird that stalks the wastes, heed my call! Great Raven, lord of the wild and master of men. Aid Me!”

  Civiliaq felt nothing. No rush of energy, no joy at the answer of an old friend, no flush of power, no hope. But one never could tell with the Raven.

  “Dark Lord. Your servant bows down before your ebon wing. Aid me!”

  Still he felt no better. This was no good. One could not evoke a guardian spirit while riddled by doubts. It was impossible. He was no longer a shaman and never would be again. Unless he did his master’s bidding and killed Alaana, he could expect no aid from Tulukkaruq. Civiliaq sighed helplessly.

  Then, without warning or sign, a black smudge appeared in the air before his face. Its indistinct outline almost looked like a feather. And then, the smudge coalesced into a more solid form, a slender obsidian dagger. In his days as a shaman of the Anatatook people Civiliaq had wielded a dagger similar to this one. The spirit helper within the dagger had been called Tuqutkaa. A fierce and loyal servant, it had showed itself hungry for demon blood and had aided him in slaying many spiritual adversaries. This dagger, as revealed to his spirit-vision, contained no such spirit helper.

  Civiliaq took the weapon anyway. It felt solid enough.

  “Is it time?” he whispered to Kuanak.

  “Not yet,” said Wolf Head gruffly. Civiliaq noted that the ends of Wolf head’s wild hair sizzled with little sparks of blue fire. Quammaixiqsuq, guardian spirit of the lightning, was already with him. “Keep your eye on Manatook. As long as he stands firm, we wait.”

  Old Manatook’s thrust continued. He struck at Kritlaq’s name-soul as ferociously as any white bear had ever attacked its prey. He felt that Tornarssuk was still with him, though the turgat fought a battle of his own above them. Manatook hadn’t expected the Disemboweler to show up. Kritlaq’s silver skeleton had been a clue, and he’d missed it. But it didn’t matter. The Great Bear had already infused him with enough power to finish Kritlaq.

  Under normal circumstances that would be true. But there was something uneven about this battle, something that wasn’t right. Manatook slashed mercilessly at his foe, hacking huge chunks of Kritlaq’s spirit away with each blow. The battle fury of the white bear knew no bounds. He struck blindly, again and again, unwilling to relent until Kritlaq’s spirit lay dead before him. And yet Kritlaq’s name-soul was able to survive each blow, new blood-red jelly seething to the surface to fill in the ragged gaps left in the wake of Manatook’s rending claws.

  Manatook growled. He swung hard, ripping Kritlaq’s face clean off. Only then did he pause in his attack.

  Kritlaq stood stoop-shouldered and still. But as Manatook watched, the contours of his face resumed their earlier shape. The jutting nose, the merciless eyes, the cruel lips curling upward. Kritlaq’s new face was smiling broadly. The expression pierced Manatook like a blade. Kritlaq was only biding time now, suffering damage which he knew he could repair by virtue of the Beforetime he had absorbed. He sought no advantage, merely to withstand the attack. He was too confident.

  If he’s waiting for something, thought Manatook, then we shall let him have it.

  He barked a signal into the spirit of the air.

  In an instant Civiliaq appeared behind the twisted name-soul of Kritlaq. He stabbed the obsidian dagger down directly between the name-soul’s shoulder blades. But the dagger crumbled away without penetrating. It was no use. That dagger was meant for someone else.

  Kritlaq whirled around, knocking Civiliaq to the side with a sweep of his arm.

  Kuanak struck next with a blast of blue lightning, focused from the tip of his narwhal staff. The shock stunned Kritlaq for a moment but caused no real damage. The name-soul immediately warped the spirit of the air all around Kuanak into a sorcerous fog. Kritlaq did this without the blessing of the Fog-Man, perhaps as a mockery of his old master. This fog was not made of droplets of water but biting, acid teeth that swarmed over Kuanak’s spirit-man. Wolf Head let out a blood-curdling scream.

  “So my sons seek to betray me as well,” said Klah Kritlaq. “I should have expected that.”

  Kuanak burned away the deadly fog with another blast of lightning, and prepared to renew his attack.

  Suddenly Old Manatook screamed. His inuseq lost its star-bright luminescence, fading to a vague blue-white color, almost as insubstantial as the Fog-Man’s mist.

  Towering above them, Tornarssuk struggled to maintain his death-grip on Erlaveersinioq’s neck. The Great Bear ignored the six raking arms and the flailing barbed tail, but the Disemboweler possessed other weapons not so readily apparent. As before, in his battle with Vithrok, Erlaveersinioq unleashed the power of chaos, of mindless and random ideation, full against his opponent. Tornarssuk was lost for a moment in a barrage of white-noise and static. He was unable to think or feel. His jaw slackened, releasing its hold on Erlaveersinioq’s throat.

  Tornarssuk stepped backward, dropping down to all four legs. He shook off the effects of the chaotic
blast as if shaking water from his furred backside. His weapons were teeth and claws, speed and ferocity. The Great Bear was determined to continue the fight.

  He growled long and loud, his own weapon, certain to confuse and disorient any foe. But the tactic had no effect on Erlaveersinioq. How can you frighten or disorient chaos? What use was rationality against mindlessness?

  He charged again at the Disemboweler, undaunted. He would not turn and run. His will had not been broken. The Great Bear did not ever give up or retreat. He renewed his onslaught of slashing claws, but Erlaveersinioq possessed ferocity in equal measure. The Disemboweler had learned a hard lesson from their fight thus far. It used every resource at its command to keep Tornarssuk’s mouth away from its neck at all costs; it did not want to face that toothsome death grip again.

  The two great turgats wrestled and tore at each other again, neither giving ground until Tornarssuk, still groggy from his mind-numbing ordeal, left his opponent a deadly opening. The bear made a charge with his head held too high and Erlaveersinioq dug its sharp, curved horns under the line of the bear’s jaw. White-hot blood spewed forth again as Tornarssuk struggled to get free but it was no use. Worse yet, impaled on the horns, his long neck was exposed to the snapping mouths of the savage dog heads the Disemboweler had for ears. Snarling viciously amid a spume of white blood, the dogs tore out Tornarssuk’s throat!

  The great turgat died in a massive explosion of energy that leveled every tent in the Yupikut camp.

  Civiliaq felt the explosion as a shockwave that tore through his spirit-man. Wolf Head grunted savagely as he fell to his knees. All four combatants were shaken by the event, but Kritlaq was first to recover.

  Old Manatook did not recover. With Erlaveersinioq’s killing stroke, the old shaman lost his guardian spirit and all his shamanic power with it. He was reduced to a simple ghost. He stood naked and completely helpless against the sorcerous name-soul.

  “All hope is gone,” said Kuanak. “We must retreat.”

  Civiliaq could barely hear his brother’s words. Merely a ghost himself, he felt the crushing weight of helplessness upon him.

  Stunned at his sudden loss of power, Old Manatook would not run away. He felt a massive sense of disbelief — it was inconceivable to him that Tornarssuk could not only have been defeated, but destroyed.

  It was Klah Kritlaq who held the killing blade now — the long slivered blade of bone. Revenge.

  “We must retreat,” growled Wolf Head again.

  Old Manatook was doggedly determined. “No!”

  He would not give up, just as Tornarssuk would not.

  “We must fight!” he said. “Don’t give up.”

  But his words had an uneven tone. It was not clear to Kuanak that Manatook knew his guardian was finished. But he must know. He must feel the same. It was too late. There was no possible way for them to win. With only a minor effort Kritlaq could exert his will over them all, hold them powerless, and destroy them.

  Kritlaq seemed unconcerned with his two former students, training his malicious yellow eyes on his rival. Perhaps he had already grabbed hold of Manatook’s soul with his sorcerous grip, for the old bear’s ghost was drawn inexorably forward, toward death and dissolution.

  “Remember this blade?” he asked.

  “I remember,” said Old Manatook, his voice barely a whisper.

  “You are nothing,” remarked Kritlaq. “Not even a shaman, just a ghost. You should have stayed up in the sky. Now you will never join the ancestors.”

  Kritlaq plunged the knife into Manatook’s chest. It’s no easy thing to kill a ghost, but Kritlaq was determined. Manatook’s inua struggled to the last, becoming smaller and smaller, a dried out husk, a wisp of dust, a fleeting memory and then gone.

  Kuanak screamed with rage. But they must flee. He reached for his brother Civiliaq and flung him over his back. He sent one last zap of lightning at Kritlaq, just enough to cover their escape.

  Kuanak flew their spirits away, heading for home. Amid the uproar of the Yupikut camp, among the screams of the people, he distinctly heard Klah Kritlaq laughing.

  CHAPTER 34

  ONE MORE MARKER

  Years ago, when Old Manatook died defending the Anatatook against a starving pack of man-wolves, Alaana built a cairn over his body. The burial place lay far to the south, near the border of the taiga where the Anatatook journeyed only in times of severe starvation and need, practically a foreign land. Alaana had only rarely visited that grave.

  To this burial ground, on a sheltered cove of rocky beach along the promontory the Anatatook called The Tongue, she came often. This cove was as peaceful a place as any, with the roaring sea on one hand and the endless stretch of lifeless tundra on the other. Her youngest daughter was buried here, though her spirit had been resurrected in the body of Tooky’s daughter Tamuanuaq.

  Alaana had raised no cairn for this newest tragedy, the dissolution of Old Manatook’s spirit. Instead she left an inuksuit to mark the spot — a tall pillar of dark stones, carefully fitted together to withstand time and wind. As tall as Old Manatook himself, the stone idol had the vague, stylized outlines of the old shaman as well, the slender frame, the sloping shoulders and long, fine neck. Alaana hoped it would stand for a long time.

  The Anatatook camp lay half a day’s ride to the west and, except for her noisome team of sled dogs, Alaana visited the site alone. She should be out searching for Noona. She should be meeting with the rest of the ancient shamans, planning some way to attack Kritlaq and use the name-soul to lead them to Vithrok’s hiding place. She should be helping her brother locate a herd of caribou and arrange a hunt. But she needed to be here. Just for a while. For herself.

  Old Manatook had been a second father to her. And while Kigiuna still lived, now an elderly man of sixty-nine winters, Alaana had watched her natural father on his slow decline into advancing age and infirmity. Kigiuna’s eye had lost its clarity, his throwing arm its vigor, and his face seemed no longer as quick with a smile as before. The proud, strong man, the invincible hero of Alaana’s childhood, had faded with time. There was no denying it.

  But as a shaman, Old Manatook had been made of sterner stuff. Despite nearly a hundred years his mind had remained as sharp as always, his spirit strong, his will indomitable. And now he had been senselessly murdered, caught up in a battle caused by Alaana’s worst mistake, the release of the sorcerer Vithrok from captivity. That one mistake had led to an ever-broadening conflict that now threatened all of Nunatsiaq. And Old Manatook had been completely consumed by it. His distinctive inua was gone forever. He would never visit the land of the ancestors, nor enjoy a final rest.

  And what of Higilak, Alaana wondered. She had been a good wife to the old shaman, had waited patiently for him as he forayed out into the wilds on some shamanic errand or other, seeing to the needs of the Anatatook or the white bears. She had sacrificed the final three years of their marriage with no word from Manatook as he worked with his old teacher Balikqi to right an ancient wrong. She had mourned his death and she had continued forward, teaching the children of the Anatatook, helping them pass the long, dark winter with lessons disguised as entertainments, preserving the ancient stories of her people, and suffering the many travails of old age along the way. She had died with his name on her lips, joyful at the end in the hopes of seeing her beloved again in the land of the ancestors. That reunion, Alaana knew, would forever be denied her now. What of Higilak, she wondered.

  “He was a good man.”

  Alaana hadn’t even noticed the appearance of Civiliaq’s ghost beside her. He looked so different now. She remembered the Civiliaq of her childhood, the handsome man who always went bare-chested and barefoot in order to demonstrate his ability to generate heat and show off his marvelous tattoos. Now the haughty smirk was gone, the smooth chest deflated, the tattoos with their snakes and stars and other marvels barely noticeable in the pale luminosity of the ghost’s image. The shamans were burning themselves out.

 
“I should have been there,” said Alaana. “I… I could have helped.”

  “No,” said Civiliaq. “No, you didn’t ever want to be there. It was horrible, Alaana. Horrible.”

  Civiliaq’s eyes jerked helplessly in their sockets at the thought of it. “You didn’t want to be there,” he continued. “I lived as a shaman for many years, and even so, only rarely saw any of the great spirits. Tekkeitsertok, the Moon Man, Sedna. They are gods, Alaana. People can’t understand, I struggled to understand, what they are, the immensity of their power. And yet there they were, the Great Bear and the Disemboweler both, hacking and slashing at one another. The people were nothing, I was nothing, even Manatook — nothing. Two of them, Alaana! Towering above us, fighting!

  “I never felt so helpless, so worthless, so vulnerable. There was nothing anyone could do. Nothing. It was all decided above our heads. People were crushed beneath their feet. And there was fire! White fire where Tornarssuk bled. He bled!”

  Alaana was shocked and disturbed just hearing about it. She wanted to urge Civiliaq to silence, but this was a sort of funeral after all. What better place to open one’s heart and let their pain spill out?

  Civiliaq continued, “Then people screaming and running, the tundra burning with white fire, and then Tornarssuk died! It died! I felt it. We all did. That ancient being, so benevolent and wise, so strong and proud. It had lived for centuries, protecting the white bears, overseeing the hunts and the rituals, one of the most powerful turgats the world has ever known, and yet it didn’t understand. When it died, I could tell. It didn’t understand! It didn’t understand anything! Not even the great turgats know why they are here, and what they are really meant to do.”

  Civiliaq echoed the words of Nunavik, saying, “We don’t belong in this fight, Alaana.”