Strontium-90 (3 page)

Before the fire died, the Lur rattled its spirit bones in its huge cupped hands and threw them onto a circle in the dirt. The beast crouched over the bones like a dire wolf over a lemming’s hole. Soon, while its hands shook, the Lur gathered the bones and dropped them into the pouch.

Kulik lay on his side, with his stomach comfortably bloated with meat. He sat up, however, and rubbed sleep out of his eyes as the Lur picked up its axe.

The axe-head was fashioned out of a red stone unfamiliar to Kulik. A normal axe had a thin, triangular-shaped piece of flint set in a split of wood and tightly tied by leather thongs. The Lur’s axe was different. The red stone was smooth, without the chip marks of a normal axe. It was heavy and oblong, with a hole drilled through the middle of the stone. The axe’s maker had thrust a stick through the hole and wedged it tight through cunning artifice. It still had leather thongs wrapped around it, however. One end had been ground to a sharp edge, but that part was also uncannily smooth. Someone had chiseled tiny symbols upon the axe-head and painted them white. The huge axe was dotted with them.

“This is
Blood of the Earth
,” the Lur chanted. “My father gave it to me. His father gave it to him. It was fashioned before the great battle against the Great Ice, thousands upon thousands of moons ago. After each heroic victory, the bearer chiseled his soul’s mark upon the axe. In this way, the axe grew more powerful through the generations. Tomorrow, I will brandish it in the Ice. And because of its strength, we shall march to the cairn of the last king of the Lurii.”

“The bones spoke of this?” Kulik asked.

The Lur’s ears lay flat against its head and it snarled like a sabertooth.

Fear coursed through Kulik. He lay down as his grandfather had said a man should do before an enraged bear. In this way, hunters who acted dead sometimes survived as the bear sniffed their pretend corpse and then waddled away.

After Kulik heard the thud of the axe upon the ground, and the Lur as it stretched out, he peeked around. Kulik waited until the fire become red glowing embers. Stealthily, he arose and silently sang the weasel song. He crept to
Blood of the Earth
. With a pounding heart, Kulik crouched before the legendary axe. His thirsty eyes drank in the many marks. Then, just as stealthily, he retreated to the other side of the embers. He sat cross-legged and took out his double-length arrow. Kulik pricked his finger, and with all the delicate art of a manito, he painted two of the Lur marks on the arrow.

Later, he bundled the arrow and lay down. Tomorrow awaited his destiny. He knew, because the bones had spoken.

***

A glacier loomed nearby. It throbbed with a malignant will. Snow drifted from its peak, and high above an eagle soared. Its piercing cry sent a shiver down Kulik’s spine.

“Death,” the Lur said.

Kulik nodded. He’d read the cry similarly.

They continued to trek between pines and crunch through the snow. The Lur halted, crouched and pointed at a track.

Kulik’s stomach knotted. “Cave bear,” he whispered.

The Lur gave an ugly laugh. “It is a beast of the Ice. Look at the size of the tracks.”

The clawed snow-prints made the Lur’s tracks seem small. Kulik understood that this bear was a monster, likely near the size of a great sloth.

The Lur lifted
Blood of the Earth
and looked down at Kulik. “Should we flee?”

Kulik closed his eyes. He had given the arrow all he could, but the eagle’s predictive cry, the size of these paw-prints…
. Kulik recalled the awful days when the hunters of the new manito had tracked him like a rabid beast.

“We are blood brothers,” Kulik said. “I want to see the cairn of he who is also my last king.”

The Lur gazed down at him for several heartbeats.

Kulik had the terrible sense that he’d insulted the beast. No, the Lur was no beast. It was a man after a fashion.

The Lur grunted, and the trek resumed.

Later, the Lur held up a massive hand. “That way,” he whispered.

Kulik hurried after the Lur. A shift of wind brought a musky odor of bear. The hairs on the back of Kulik’s neck lifted in terror. He thought to hear the crunch of snow on the other side of the drift they raced past. He doggedly followed the Lur, who lengthened his stride and left Kulik struggling farther and farther behind.

Kulik caught up to the couched Lur hidden amongst a clump of pines. They waited and caught a glimpse of the monster. It was beyond Kulik’s understanding. The bear was indeed the size of a great sloth. The white bear rose to its hind feet to become a towering monstrosity, several feet taller than the Lur. The beast sniffed the air. The bear had paws bigger than a man’s chest and had to weigh more than ten grown men. The gigantic beast surely belonged to the
Ice. If it caught their scent and charged, they would die.

Despite the distance, Kulik heard the bear grunt as it dropped back onto all fours. The deep sound put goosebumps on his arms. Kulik held his breath, but the awful beast ambled away into the forest.

The Lur glanced at Kulik. They arose and circled the area. In time, without further incident or more sightings of the beast, they reached the base of the dread glacier.

“There,” the Lur whispered. “Last night, the king’s spirit spoke to me in my dream. That is the entrance.”

Kulik shaded his eyes against the sun. There was a fissure, a vertical crack in the ice. The crack began fifty feet up on a ledge. The crack or fissure jagged for thirty feet more. Vapors drifted out of the fissure, as if the glacier slumbered and only trickled a tiny portion of its evil.

The Lur began to climb.

Kulik struggled after him. The holds were slippery and the way steep. Then a massive hand gripped his highest wrist. The Lur lifted Kulik the last twelve feet as if he were a child.

When Kulik’s feet rested on the ledge, his heart began to thud. Eerie groans emanated from the fissure, together with a slow and terrible creak, as if the glacier grinded its teeth in rage.

“It’s haunted,” Kulik whispered.

“With the spirits of my ancestors and the evil of the
Ice,” the Lur said.

Kulik thought about the terrible bear. He chewed his lip. It was so dark inside the fissure. “We need a torch,” he said.

The Lur reached into his leather sack and withdrew a tightly tied bundle of dried reeds. He knelt and struck flint and tinder, and soon the torch crackled with fire. With the torch in one hand and
Blood of the Earth
in the other, the Lur entered the fissure. Kulik followed with his knife in his fist. He marveled at the warmth that blew out of the fissure. The Lur must have noticed it, too, for he glanced down at Kulik.

Within the fissure, the ice glowed with a blue radiance. Kulik touched a side. It was cold, but it was also beautiful and pure.

The glacier groaned, and vapor drifted in the air.

“Look at how your torch flickers,” Kulik said. “There must be other openings.”

The Lur tightened his grip of the torch. “Likely, the bear lives somewhere near. Take out your arrow.”

Kulik sheathed his knife, strung his bow and congratulated himself with having coated the string with goose fat. It was damp in the fissure, and if that dampness seeped into the string, it would weaken it. He notched his double-length arrow, and he breathed deeply, and noticed the warmth once more. He hoped the bear lived far from here.

“Follow me,” the Lur said.

Instead of shrinking, the fissure grew until the Lur’s torch no longer lit the upper reaches. They took several twists and turns, and glanced at each other in the eerie blueness of the torchlight. Each grinned, Kulik crookedly and the Lur with hideous savagery.

Soon they came to a fork.

The Lur sniffed the leftward passage and the rightward one. He thrust the torch to the left. “There is an animal stench, and the air is warmer. This way also leads down. The other goes up and is cold.”

They descended until the dwindling torch singed the Lur’s fur. The Lur took out a second torch and lit it from the first. By the time the second torch had burned halfway, they reached frozen ground deep inside the glacier.

Icy stalactites hung like fangs and the passage grew wider. Water dripped from some of the giant icicles and soaked into the ground.

Kulik knelt and touched the ground. “It’s thawed out,” he whispered.

The stench of bear grew, but the Lur’s stride lengthened and the air grew warmer still. They turned into a new passage and halted in wonder. Steam hissed from a vent in the ground.

“The legends are true,” the Lur whispered. “Not even the Ice could kill all our great magic.”

“Over there,” Kulik said, and then he could no longer speak.

Like one in a dream, the Lur shuffled to the sight. Kulik stumbled after him.

There embedded in the ice lay the ancient king of the Lurii. The frozen king lay on stones, stones chiseled with many of the soul marks on
Blood of the Earth
. On the corpse’s upper arm was a reddish band that gleamed in the torchlight. By squinting, Kulik noticed marks on the band.

The Lur gave the torch to Kulik and then put his hand on the ice. “I carry your axe by right of blood, O king—” The Lur’s voice cracked at the end.

Kulik glanced at him sidelong.

The Lur soundlessly moved his mouth. When he spoke again, it was with a tremor. “Our race perishes, great one. We dwindle because the
Great Ice broke our steles and snapped our totem poles. It severed us from our mountains. We have valiantly struggled on, O king. But lately the wombs of our women have grown barren. The Skunk People with their beetling brows ambush our last warriors. We need the charm of royalty. We need a new king to gather us, infuse our hunters with pride and raise new victory steles. I am of your blood, great one, descended through the generations. I have sworn to find you and return with the charm. Honor us, great one. Defeat the Ice once more and keep its minions at bay while I free the great charm.”

With slow and steady strokes, the Lur began to hack into the ice with his axe.

Kulik watched with growing fear as ice shards flew. The Lur seemed demented, unmindful of the angry grunts that came out of the depths of the darkness. There were shuffling sounds and the occasional click of claws against stone. Then Kulik felt the bear’s presence. The thought that it was here in the ice with them—

With trembling hands, Kulik hacked ice with his knife and wedged the torch into that. Sweat beaded his face and slicked his underarms.

The Lur cried out triumphantly.

Kulik glanced over his shoulder. The Lur touched the dead king’s reddish charm.

“We will rise again!” the Lur shouted. He hacked at the ice with renewed force and soon exposed more of the legendary king of the Lurii.

Then a dreadful roar refocused their attention. Horrible eyes appeared out of the darkness. The eyes were much too high off the ground. Then a vast head took shape and the monstrous, shuffling body of the gigantic white bear.

The bear of the Ice exposed teeth the length of stakes. It roared. The sound shook Kulik’s ribs and the sight robbed him of motion. The monstrous creature the size of a great sloth had a rank odor and meaty breath. Here in the ice, in this huge cavern with stalactites higher than even the Lur could reach, the bear reared up onto its hind feet. It was a nightmarish sight. Kulik felt like a mouse before a lynx.

The Lur shook his stone axe.

“Slink back into the darkness, beast! I defy the Great Ice that compels you! I am of the Lurii. I am home. We will not let anyone drive us from our lands again!”

The bear roared, then sank onto its front paws, and
 charged. The deafening bellow caused a giant icicle to crack. It plunged like a spear and shattered against the ground. Pieces went flying. The Lur stepped on one and slipped, and that saved his life. The bear’s paw passed over him. The fantastic beast lumbered past.

One tiny shard struck Kulik on the cheek. It woke him from his stupor. Hot blood welled, making him blink in surprise.

The white bear whirled around with brutal speed—a magical act for such a monstrous beast—but the Lur leapt to his feet and met the attack with a roar. He swung
Blood of the Earth
and the blade shattered the giant bear’s shoulder bone with a terrible crack. The monster rolled and struck. The blow hurled the Lur against ice with such violent force that he slid to the ground in a seemingly boneless heap.

Kulik gave a loud cry of anguish.

The bear rose up onto its hind legs and shook its head. It bellowed rage. The left front leg dangled uselessly and crimson blood stained its white fur.

With tears in his eyes—even as he marveled at the blow and the powerful magic of
Blood of the Earth
—Kulik ran at the bear. He yanked the bowstring farther than he ever had. He aimed at the chest. The bow twanged. The double-length arrow hissed and sank into the furry expanse. It cunningly slid past protective ribs, and with baleful spirit power, it punctured the mighty heart.

The nightmarish bear coughed explosively.