by Ken Altabef
Alaana lifted her war-spear from the marble floor. She continued to receive the warmth of the tumo, although she was now a passive figure in the process, a helpless, though grateful beneficiary of the efforts of her friends.
“Nunavik?” she whispered. “Tsungi has left me. Are you still there?”
“I am here beside you, as always,” the voice of the walrus returned. He sounded different to Alaana now. Whereas before they had been two equals engaged in conversation, now the walrus shaman was speaking directly to Alaana’s human soul. The words had a deep timbre and a mild echo.
Alaana proceeded along the ebon corridors of the citadel. She found the floor plan similar to the layout of the Ice Mountain. She had a very good idea where she would find Vithrok. There were always stairs in such places, and always a high chamber that stood above all the rest. Vithrok would be there. She remembered the room at the top of the Ice Mountain, directly above the Heart, where she and the bears used to sit and gaze out along the tundra.
The stairs in this place were built for Tunrit legs and Alaana huffed and puffed as she worked her way up each huge step. She used the butt of her spear as a staff to help with the long climb.
At the top she found the circular chamber with its open dome above and cistern of oozing Beforetime below. Vithrok’s back was turned. The Tunrit had one hand braced on either side of the open embrasure that overlooked the plain, his huge head tilted up toward the sky. He grunted softly with some unspeakable effort.
Alaana knew the nature of Vithrok’s struggle. It was an incredible effort of willpower to contain the seething bedlam housed in this place. It had, in fact, served as a convenient distraction that had kept Vithrok from noticing Alaana’s appearance at the citadel and the efforts of Oogloon in dispelling the ice barrier. The sorcerer was so focused on his task that he didn’t even notice Alaana until she entered the room.
The violent paroxysms of the Beforetime were so thick in this place Alaana felt its presence even without the power of second sight. It left a sense of impending doom hanging over their heads, as a great weight about to fall, a blazing inferno ready to ignite.
Vithrok turned from the window. Alaana had never before seen her nemesis in physical form. Having just seen the two figures of the Tunrit shamans outside, tall and perfectly formed, their faces strong and handsome despite their heavy brows, the visage of Vithrok was shocking. The body he wore was long dead. His skin was pale as snow, so dry and shriveled it lay peeling from one cheek. The hair had half fallen away, leaving the remaining brittle strands a ragged curtain hanging to shoulder length. Vithrok’s throat had recently been torn out and repaired, leaving the front of his neck slack and pouched like a frog’s neck, sagging down with the consistency of putty.
He wore trousers of rotten fur. Strapped to his chest was a war shirt fashioned from the teeth of long-dead monsters. His arms were bare and muscular but ended in shriveled stumps of hands, the color of night.
The sorcerer’s eyes blazed with a multicolored fire.
That same fire, reminiscent of the dazzling array of the Beforetime Alaana had glimpsed earlier, crackled around the edges of Vithrok’s figure. The sorcerer was bathed in it, licking and searing him at the edges as if he was already aflame.
Vithrok’s thin, blackened lips peeled back from his white teeth. His dead face was so distorted Alaana couldn’t tell if this was a sneer or a half-smile.
“So the little shaman makes her appearance,” said Vithrok. “What should I do? Shall I call down dread Erlaveersinioq the Disemboweler to step on you? Or Sedna? Or the Raven?”
The sorcerer leaned forward. His blazing eyes squinted slightly as he inspected his foe. It seemed he was having trouble seeing, and Alaana could well imagine his difficulty as he fought to screen out all the clashing, blaring colors that must be crowding his vision.
Vithrok chuckled a dry, whisper of a laugh. “Only a woman after all, just a woman. You’ve no power at all, have you?”
Vithrok’s head was in constant motion, looking around the room, no doubt tracking from one bizarre sight to the next. He addressed the various invisible distractions saying, “Look what an idiot she is! She brings a wooden spear to use against me.” He spread his arms wide, his curdled palms forward. “Stab it in! Go ahead. This body is already dead. You can’t hurt me.”
Alaana didn’t move.
“Shoo, fly!” said Vithrok. “Go away before I crush you. You are nothing to me. I have a world to destroy.”
Alaana stood firm. “I just want to know. What is it all about? Why did you torture my husband and kill so many of my friends? Why did you murder the great spirits?”
Vithrok smirked and shook his head. It was as if he didn’t remember. “Your husband?”
“You used him, you tried to set the shadows against me, to destroy the Anatatook.”
“These are the things you concern yourself with? Some husband among the Anatatook? You are nothing. An animal, scrabbling in the snow. There is not an ounce of Tsungi left in you. You’re not even worth killing. Go away.” Vithrok waved a clawed hand at Alaana, and began to turn away.
“I am something!” said Alaana defiantly. “I am a woman!”
Vithrok turned back. “A woman? What is that? Some little afterthought of the Raven? And you’re going to stand here and challenge me?”
“Yes,” said Alaana defiantly. “I will challenge you because what you are doing is wrong.”
“Wrong?” Vithrok chuckled again. “You know nothing, little woman. This is wrong!” Suddenly angry, he slapped the wall of black stone. He pointed to the rolling tundra outside the window. “That’s wrong! That’s all wrong. It should never have been!”
The sorcerer was raging now, speaking both to Alaana and to the demons in the room surrounding him. “We had paradise. We held it in our hands. Such a paradise as you could never know.”
“The time Before?” Alaana asked.
“Look around you. Can’t you see? This is but a glimpse. A faint glimmer of what we had. Oh, but you can’t see it now. You’re nothing now. That’s what happened to us, too. It all was taken away. Yes, stolen away. By who? By Tsungi. That name is familiar to you I know…”
“Yes,” admitted Alaana.
“Yes. There was a time I could have used that name against you, but no longer. It isn’t your secret name any more. You are nothing to him now, if you ever mattered to him at all. Maybe now you’ll understand what he is, what he does. Once you are of no more use to him, he discards you like so much useless garbage. Tsungi and that other one,” Vithrok glanced out the embrasure at the Black Spot in the sky, the dark circle that had now drawn so near it was half the size of the sun.
“They are the guilty ones. They destroyed paradise. Not me! They threw it all away over some petty argument. And we were left with this. But don’t you worry, little woman. I’m going to set things right. I’m going to transform this world. I am going to restore paradise, that’s what I’m doing. Nothing could be more right than that. I don’t expect you to understand. Go back to your tents and your burrows in the snow. Go feed your belly. Get out of my sight.”
Vithrok turned back to the window to stare again at the vast, lifeless plain.
And Alaana wondered if the sorcerer could actually be right? Was it possible to destroy in order to rebuild? If any of Old Higilak’s stories were to believed, the world as it existed now was only a pale reflection of what had been before. Perhaps Tsungi was the villain, and Vithrok the righteous crusader. Had Alaana, under the influence of Tsungi, been blind to it before?
Alaana suffered a long moment of doubt. A moment that would have killed a shaman, but not an ordinary woman.
She stood alone. She had intended to stop the sorcerer, to thwart his plan. But would such an action save the world, or destroy all hope of paradise? Had the great turgats been destroyed only so that they might rise again? Vithrok had said as much to Tekkeitsertok before he had broken the caribou-spirit’s graceful neck. If she acted now, w
ould she be saving the world or condemning it?
She had no way to know. Tsungi had never bothered to explain himself; the spirits has such little care for men, or women.
The sorcerer’s explanation was plausible enough. This was Vithrok, hero of the Tunrit, who had done so much good for his people in their most desperate hours. He had been imprisoned by Tugto and Oogloon, those venerable spirits who stood just outside the citadel. They had described their kinsman as evil. But what if they were lying? What if they had helped Alaana for their own nefarious reasons? She couldn’t take their word for it. She didn’t know their motivations.
Alaana had thought her goal clear in coming to this place. But instead of a lair of great evil she had found a beautiful palace at the pole. Now she was anything but certain. If she acted against Vithrok she might become the world’s greatest villain herself. She had no way to know, no way to decide. But she must decide, and act immediately. She was only a simple woman, and Vithrok was right about one thing. A human being was hardly more than an insect, lost in the great world of the spirits, a little soul who was told nothing, who understood nothing.
Maybe the game played by the spirits was too large for her to comprehend after all. Wasn’t that the message the entire world seemed to be beating into her head, year after year, tragedy after tragedy? In this great game, a human being was inconsequential.
No, she thought, a person was not inconsequential. She thought about her husband. Ben was a truly beautiful person, a loving father, a devoted husband. He had been abused since the moment he’d been born. Mistreated in Louisiana, orphaned and made a slave in the arctic. And yet, beneath it all, he had such a wonderful spirit. He made music. He laughed with the children and he loved her unconditionally. And she had seen him tortured by this foul creature. Vithrok had done that. And that could never be right.
Alaana launched her spear. It sailed across the room and struck the sorcerer directly between the shoulders. Vithrok screamed.
The wooden spear could do no harm, but the spirits contained within the shaft went straight for the sorcerer’s soul. Yesterday, Alaana had killed her friends with this spear, knowing that the spirit of a slain bear would remain within the weapon for five days. The souls of Orfik and Oktolik, hidden from Vithrok’s sight by Kaokortok’s sigils carved into the spearhead, would have their revenge.
The spirits of the bears stormed into the sorcerer’s body, striking into his very soul to do their grim work. Vithrok fell screaming to the ground. He writhed across the floor as if trying to shake off a hornet’s nest that had suddenly blossomed inside his chest. If he’d had just a little more time he might have struck up a defense. But the savage fury of the bears was instantaneous. If only he’d had a little more time.
Vithrok screamed as the bears tore his soul apart.
After a moment the body lay still.
Alaana said, “Nunavik, I can’t see. Is there anything left of his spirit?”
“Not a scrap,” said Nunavik with glee. “The bears did their job very well.”
“What of them? Orfik and Oktolik?”
“Gone.”
Alaana had expected as much, and so had the bears. For them vengeance came at a high cost, but was still counted as a bargain.
Alaana looked down at Vithrok’s dead body. With the exception of the spear jutting from its back it looked no different than before.
“So you can’t see it?” asked Nunavik. “The Beforetime?”
“No, but I can feel it, building. I can feel the pressure in my ears. It’s going to explode, isn’t it?”
“We haven’t much time,” agreed the walrus. “By the way, I’m just wondering, can you see that? The Thing?”
Alaana looked at the sky outside. The Black Spot was approaching quickly and she had no way to stop it. No way anyone could.
“Now this is a fine fuddling you’ve got us into.”
CHAPTER 45
THE SHADOW OF EVERYTHING EXISTING
Nunavik and Alaana stood out on the open plain before the citadel, watching doom approach. The crush of the Beforetime was less oppressive out in the open but it continued to build. The Tunrit citadel cried out, shifting and cracking ominously behind them.
Alaana couldn’t see the golden walrus, but she could feel that her friend was still there.
“What do we do now? Any ideas? Is there anything we can do?”
“Against that? It’s too late. We face the inevitable. It’s the end, Alaana. There is no doubt.”
She had to believe it. There was nothing they could do but watch it come.
“We beat Vithrok,” he said.
“We did.”
“Stabbed him right in the back.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“He deserved it.”
After all that had happened, Alaana was not completely sure about that.
“What do you think will happen first? The Beforetime to erupt and consume us in unquenchable fire, or the Thing to arrive and turn us to ice? Do we burn or freeze today?”
If the walrus was joking, the humor was lost on Alaana. She felt as if she had made a mistake, one more among a long line of many.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have killed him. Have I doomed the whole world?”
“You didn’t bring that thing here, Vithrok did.”
“I know that. But he was going to do something with it when it came. He was going to remake the world, bring paradise back, or something like that. Not just stand here staring at it like the two of us.”
“Don’t you believe it. Could you have done anything differently, Alaana? I don’t think so.”
Alaana had to agree. Given the events of her life, all the things that had happened to her, circumstances that had been set into motion by Tsungi, a force much greater than she or any person, probably greater than any of the turgats. Faced with Vithrok’s naked back and the painful memory of her husband’s torture she’d had no choice but to cast that spear.
“Well it’s just you and me, Uncle Walrus,” said Alaana cheerfully, “at the end. Now tell me. What do you really think of me? Am I an idiot?”
“I think you are kind,” Nunavik said. “And honest, and brave.”
“High praise,” said Alaana. “And I’ll tell you this. If I have to stand here and watch everything come to an end, there isn’t any other soul I’d rather stand beside than you.”
Nunavik was about to say the same when he was interrupted by a tremendous cracking boom. The Tunrit citadel split in half, cleaved by the conflicting energies of the Beforetime. This crack left itself ringing in her ears. It sounded as if it must have extended down into the earth, tearing across the everfrost itself.
The Black Spot came on faster and faster, growing larger and larger, heading straight for the sun.
The black rock of the citadel burst into multicolored flame at her back and Alaana turned to see a tremendous figure of intense light rise up out of the citadel.
Absorbing the massive power of all the Beforetime sequestered there, the light took the shape of a gigantic old man. He was clad in furs made of white light, tailored in a strange loose-fitting way. The figure towered above the lone Anatatook shaman who stood out on the plain.
And at last Alaana looked upon the face of her secretive guardian Tsungi, a lifelong dream finally fulfilled. Whether Tsungi lent her the special sight just for the occasion, or the gigantic figure was too bright for mortal eyes to miss, Alaana couldn’t know. It didn’t matter.
The concept of Tsungi may have been more than a mortal could hope to perceive. The great spirit had a face that was impossible to see clearly, at once forming and unforming, a face which was in fact a multitude of faces, laughing and crying, coming and going. It had her Uncle Anaktuvik’s eyes, her father’s nose, the thorny brows of Old Manatook, the buck teeth of Talliituk, the smile of Igguaniaq, the rounded cheeks of a bull walrus, the tines of a caribou, the pristine fur of a white bear. The sight of it filled Alaana with a strange warmth and an inner calm. Th
e face settled into one distinct form, an elderly grandfather. No one that Alaana specifically recognized, it was the grandfather to all.
Tsungi paid no heed to Alaana whatsoever, and she dared pose none of the questions that had burned in her heart for so many years. The figure turned his attention to the sky above and the darkness that was so rapidly approaching the sun.
Tsungi raised both arms and called out to it.
“Raigli,” he said. “Raigli.” His voice was a multitude of voices, a great buzzing chorus comprised of every voice Alaana had ever heard. The intonation held an authoritative tone, such as one friend might use when speaking to another who had lost its way and acted badly.
The call had an immediate effect, redirecting the seething ball of darkness away from the sun and toward their present position. As the darkness descended upon the world it reformed itself, finally coming to rest in the shape of an enormous old woman. The woman had the appearance of a negative image, her hair stark white, her skin a deep purple tone etched with brilliant white brows and crease lines. Her eyes were black with white pupils, her teeth black in the white shadow of her mouth.
Alaana stared up at the two colossi as they faced each other on the plain. Raigli seemed hesitant, and perhaps a little frightened.
“You saved me,” Tsungi said. “I thank you, Raigli. You raised me up from my imprisonment at the center of the world.”
“You saved me,” she said. “Your will was behind the hand that drew me here back across the empty spaces. Yours was the mind that called out to me, wasn’t it?”
“In a way, yes. Trapped so far down below, there was little I could do. I was a long, long way down, the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. I had been driven deep after our ‘disagreement.’ The surface world was all but unreachable to me. I sent little bits of myself up over the years, just enough to empower the shamans of this world. But I grew ever weaker, bit by bit.
