The Skrayling Tree (10 page)

“If you continue this war with us,” said Ayanawatta reasonably, “you will all die.”

The little medicine man made spitting sounds to show his contempt for these threats. He turned his back on us, daring us to
strike.

Then he whirled to face us again, shaking his fingers at us. It was clear he feared the power of our medicine. While his was
little more than a primitive memory of the reality, he might well have a natural talent. I did not underestimate him or any
power he might have stumbled upon. I watched him warily as he continued.

“The Kakatanawa are banished from our land as we are from theirs, yet they came and took the lance our people made. You say
we have no business here, but neither have you. You should be living under the gloomy
skies of your own deep realm. Give us what is ours, then go back to the Land of the Black Panther.”

Again White Crow drew himself into an oratorical stance. “You know nothing, but I know your name, small medicine. You are
called Ipkeptemi the Two Tongues. You are Ukwidji, the Lie-Maker. You speak truth and you speak lies with the same breath.
You know it is our destiny to make and guard the Silver Path. We must go where the Balance and the tree manifest themselves.
You know that is true. Your treasures are gone. Your time is past.” White Crow threw his arms wide in a placatory sign of
respect. “Your destiny is complete, and ours is not yet accomplished.”

The Two Tongues scowled deeply at this and lowered his head as if considering a reply.

From behind me, an arrow flew past my ear. I ducked down. Another arrow fell short of Klosterheim, who, with eyes narrowing,
began to stumble back to where his men awaited his orders. I saw him pick up his sword and begin directing the attack on us
again. I whirled, my bowstring pulled, and took another sturdy little warrior in the shoulder. I had a habit of wounding rather
than killing, although it was not always appropriate! What was strange, however, was how the arrow made a sound as if it had
struck wood. The head was barely in the wound. The pygmy pulled it free and ran off. This strange density of physique was
common to them all.

The Two Tongues had created a diversion, of course. I had been fascinated by his performance. So fascinated that I had not
heard the other Pukawatchi creeping up from the river line. Ayanawatta turned in a single movement
to hurl a lance into our nearest attacker. Bes swung her immense bulk around to face the newcomers and stood blaring her rage
as a Pukawatchi arrow bounced off her chest. She seemed more upset by the archer’s bad manners than by any pain he might have
inflicted. He was in her trunk in seconds and flying across the prairie to land, a broken puppet, at Klosterheim’s feet.

Grumbling, Ayanawatta stooped to pick up his twin war clubs from the bundle at his feet. Their wide, flat edges ended in serrations,
like the teeth of a beast. He spun them around his head, making them sing their own wild war-song as he waded towards the
pygmies, slaughtering with a kind of joy I had only seen once before in my father when he had faced Gaynor’s men. This battle-rage
was cultivated by many adepts who argued that if one had to kill to defend oneself, then the killing had better be done with
due consideration, ceremony and efficiency.

White Crow had taken out one of his lances. He did not throw it, but used it like a halberd, keeping his opponents at a distance
and then stabbing once, quickly. I had thought at first it was corroded or rusted like so much of the found metal these people
used, but now I recognized it for what it was.

The metal was black through and through. As the youth wielded his lance with expert skill, it began to murmur and scream.
Red inscriptions flickered angrily at its heart. I was oddly cheered. Surely where that blade sang, Ulric must be near!

I had found the black blade, though I had not sought it. I could see Klosterheim grinning in anticipated
triumph. For him, the blade was not nearly as important as the cup his people called the
Gradel.
Klosterheim wanted the thing for his own ambitions. If he took it back to Satan, he was certain he would be restored in his
master’s eyes. The central irony was that Satan himself sought reconciliation with God. It was as if our danger were so great
that the time had come for the two to bury their differences.

Yet it was impossible for Klosterheim to work for the common good. The gaining of the Grail must be by his achievement, I
knew, or he would see no respect in his master’s eyes. This complicated and contradictory relationship with the Prince of
the Morning was, to be frank, somewhat beyond my powers of perception.

White Crow had not seen all the Pukawatchi. A third war party had swept up from a bend in the river. There must have been
another forty of the pygmies, all armed with bows. They had walked across the river bottom, like beavers, and had emerged
immediately behind us. Our only advantage was that the bows were not especially powerful, and the pygmies were not expert
shots.

While we covered him, White Crow repacked Bes’s saddle, adjusting straps and other harness until he was satisfied that all
was secure. The canoe would now act to guard our backs.

I kept the new party at a distance with my bow. Their own arrows could be shot back, but not with any great power as they
were too short. Ayanawatta’s arrows, however, were perfect. Slender and long, they were a joy to use. They were so accurate
that they might have
been charmed. But there were not enough. Fewer and fewer were being shot back by the Pukawatchi. Slowly they were closing
the circle.

White Crow adjusted the copper mesh protecting Bes’s front and head. She kneeled for us.

White Crow shouted for us to get onto the mammoth, and we scrambled into that massive saddle. We pushed the maddened pygmies
back with our bowstaves. Ayanawatta was the last to come up, his twin war clubs cracking skulls and bones so rapidly that
it sounded like the popping of a hot fire made with damp wood. He worked with astonishing skill and delicacy, knowing exactly
which part of each club would land where. Those dense skulls were hard to crack, but he fought to kill. Each single blow economically
took a life. When Bes moved away from the tumbled corpses towards the pygmy archers, they scattered back.

The remains of Klosterheim’s band continued to stalk in our wake, but they, too, had few arrows left. They followed like coyotes
tracking a cougar, as if they hoped we would lead them to fresh meat.

Their numbers were now badly reduced. They must have been debating the wisdom of continuing with this war party. Klosterheim
had not delivered what he had promised them. The Two Tongues probably had some self-interest in leaguing himself with my husband’s
old enemy. If he had expected Klosterheim to know how to defeat us, he had been disappointed.

I was surprised when they began to drop back. They were soon far behind us. No doubt they were discussing fresh strategies.
Klosterheim would, for his part, insist
on the pursuit. I understood him well enough to know that.

The woodlands were sparser now, breaking into isolated thickets as the undulating grasslands opened up before us. Huge mountains
dominated the distant landscape. The pygmies were among the grasses and wild corn. The smoke we saw behind us showed that
at least some of them had made camp. White Crow remained suspicious. He said it was an old trick of theirs to leave one man
making smoke while the rest continued in pursuit. After studying it for a while though, he decided most of the Pukawatchi
were there preparing food. He could tell by the quality of the smoke that they had made a good kill. This would be the message
any stragglers would see, and it would bring them into the camp.

Ayanawatta said the Pukawatchi were a civilized people and would feel shame if they ate their meat raw. The fire told of a
beast serving the whole party. While this was not a deliberate message, the Pukawatchi would know how friend and enemy alike
would read it. They had called off hunting us, at least for the moment.

“And a big deer will fill a lot of little stomachs!” Ayanawatta laughed.

I asked him if there were many people of Pukawatchi height, and he seemed surprised at my question. “In their own lands, all
is to their stature. Even their monsters are smaller!”

“That is what made it both easy and hard for me,” chimed in White Crow. “I was easy to see but hard to kill!”

The Pukawatchi were cliff dwellers from the southwest
living in sophisticated cave-towns. Most of their civic life was conducted inside. When he had visited Ipkeptemi the Wise,
their greatest medicine chief, White Crow had experienced some difficulty crawling through the city’s smaller tunnels.

“And did you steal their treasures?” I asked. I had, of course, a specific interest in the black blade.

“I am charged to bring important medicine back to the Kakatanawa. Only I can handle the metal, since they lost their previous
White Crow.”

“Who was their previous White Crow man?” I asked almost hesitantly. I could not help fearing this road of inquiry would take
me somewhere I did not want to go.

His answer was not the one I had anticipated.

“My father,” he said.

“And his name?” I asked.

White Crow looked at me in some surprise. “That is still his own,” he said.

I had offended some protocol and fell silent by way of apology. In this strange world where dream-logic must be followed or
consign you forever to limbo I swam again in familiar supernatural waters, ready for all experience. Old disciplines returned.
I was prepared to make the most of what I could. Even the most dedicated adventurers accepted how form and ritual were essential
to this life. A game of cards depends upon chance, but can only be played if strict rules are followed.

We played the ball game that evening after we had made early camp. It was a form of backgammon but required more memory and
skill. Such games were
cultivated by Ayanawatta’s people, he said. Those who played them well had special status and a name. They were called
wabenosee
or, more humorously,
sheshe-buwak,
which meant ‘ducks’ and was also the nickname for the balls used in their game.

“Presumably we are at the mercy of fate, like the rattling balls,” I said. “Do we control anything? Do we not merely maintain
the status quo as best we can?”

Ayanawatta was not sure. “I envy you your skills, Countess Oona. I still yearn to walk the white path between the realms,
but until now my dream-journeys, dangerous and enlightening as they have been, have been accomplished by other means.”

He did not know if I was any more or less at the mercy of fate than himself. He longed to make just one such walk, he said,
before his spirit passed into its next state.

I laughed and made an easy promise. “If I ever can, I’ll take you,” I said. “Every sentient creature should look once upon
the constantly weaving and separating moonbeam roads.” The women of my kind, of course, constantly crossed and recrossed them.
And in our actions, in the stories we played out, we wove the web and woof of the multiverse, the fabric of time and space.
From the original matter, acted upon by our dreams and desires, by our stories, came the substance and structure of the whole.

“Divine simplicity,” I said. With it came the full understanding of one’s value as an individual, the understanding that every
action taken in the common cause is an action taken for oneself and vice versa. “The moonbeam roads are at once the subtlest
and easiest of routes. Sometimes I feel almost guilty at the ease with which I
move between the realms.” All other adepts hoped to achieve the ability, natural to dreamthieves and free dream-travelers,
of walking between the worlds. Our unconscious skills made us powerful, and they made us dangerous but also highly endangered,
especially when the likes of Gaynor chose to challenge the very core of belief upon which all our other realities depended.

“The path is not always easy and not always straight,” I told him. “Sometimes it takes the whole of one’s life to walk quite
a short distance. Sometimes all you do is return to where you began.”

“Circumstances determine action? Context defines?” Grinning, White Crow made several quick movements with his fingers. Balls
rattled and danced like planets for a moment and then were still. He had won the game. “Is that what you learned at your
musram
?” And he darted me a quick, sardonic look, to show me that he could use more than one vocabulary if he wished. Most of us
know several symbolic languages, which affords us few problems with the logic and sound of spoken language. We are equally
alert to the language of street and forest. We are often scarcely aware which language we use, and it never takes us long
to learn a new one. These skills are primitive compared to our monstrous talent for manipulating the natural world, which
makes shape-taking almost second nature. Quietly, however, White Crow was reminding me that he, too, was an adept.

“To wander the paths between the worlds at will,” he said, “is not the destiny of a Kakatanawa White Crow man.”

Ayanawatta lit a pipe. White Crow refused it, making an excuse. “We need have no great fear of the Pukawatchi now, but it
would be wise to keep guard. I go forward to seek an old friend and hope to be with you in the morning. If I am not, continue
as we are going, towards the mountains. You will find me.”

And then, swiftly, he disappeared into the night.

We smoked and talked for a little longer. Ayanawatta had had dealings with the pygmies. They had skills and knowledge denied
to most and were fair traders, if hard bargainers. When I told him that Klosterheim had been the same size as me when I last
saw him, Ayanawatta smiled and nodded as if this were familiar enough. “I told you,” he said, “we are living in that kind
of time.”

Did he know why Klosterheim was now the size of a Pukawatchi? He shook his head. White Crow might know. The dwarves and the
giants were leaving their ordained realms. But he and others like him had begun the process, by exploring into those realms.
He, after all, had broken the rules, as had White Crow, long before the Pukawatchi began to move north. The dwarves had always
lived at peace with those from the other two realms, each with its own hunting grounds. All he knew now was that the closer
to the sacred oak one came, the closer the realms conjoined.