The Skrayling Tree (14 page)

In a lifetime of moving between the realms I had heard few voices as beautiful as White Crow’s. The song wove among the branches
and glittering icicles. Its echoes turned into harmonies until the entire grove sang with him. Together they sang of ancient
ways, of bitter truths and golden imaginings. They sang an elegy for all that had ever been lost. They sang of the morning
and of the hours of the day, of the months and the passing of the seasons. As they sang I could barely stop myself from weeping
with the beauty of it. Ayanawatta stood straight, with his arms folded, listening with absolute intensity. He wore only his
tattoos, his paint, his jewelry and a breechclout of fine beaded vellum. His copper skin glowed in the wonderful light, his
chest swelling, his muscles clenching, as he gave his whole being to the music.

Wearing her hero feathers, Bes, too, stirred to this song as if with a sense of security. Yet as well as comfort, the song
had power. It had purpose.

Through the surrounding lens of ice, I saw something moving on the horizon. Gradually I made out more detail. It trotted quite
rapidly towards us and stopped abruptly about ten yards from where Ayanawatta and White Crow still sang.

Again, I was unsure of the scale, but the beast they had summoned seemed huge. Regarding us with solemn, curious eyes as a
fresh curtain of snow began to fall stood a massive white bison, a living totem, the manifestation of a Kakatanawa goddess.
Her red-rimmed eyes glaring with proud authority, she stared deeply into mine. I recognized a confirmation. She pawed the
snow, her breath steaming.

Bes lifted her trunk and uttered a great bellow which shook the forest and set ice cracking and falling. The white buffalo
tossed her head as if in alarm, turned and was gone, trotting rapidly into the deep snow.

Ayanawatta was delighted. He, too, had seen the buffalo. He was full of excitement. Everything, he said, was unfolding as
it should. Bes had warned the buffalo of our danger, and she had responded. Powerful medicine protected the land of the Kakatanawa,
which in turn protected their city, which in turn protected the eternal tree. Once we crossed the mountains, we would enter
the great valley of the Kakatanawa. Then we would almost certainly be safe, ready to begin the last crucial stage of our journey.

I had no reason to doubt him. I kept my own counsel, congratulating him on the beauty, rather than the power, of his voice.
I knew, of course, that I was in the presence of skilled summoners. My father was one who could call upon bargains his family
had made with the Lords
of the Higher Worlds, with powerful elementals. He could invoke spirits of air, earth, fire and water as easily as another
might plow a furrow. I could not be sure who had summoned the white buffalo, or whether she had heard both men singing and
come to inspect us. If she was as strict with us as she was with her own herd, and indeed with herself, she would soon give
us an order. I wondered why I should feel such sisterly feelings towards the animal. Was it simply because Ayanawatta had
given me the Indian name of White Buffalo Woman?

The drum continued its steady beating. White Crow rose gracefully to his feet. Swaying from side to side he began to dance.
It was only then that I realized what Ayanawatta had meant.

White Crow was opening the gateway for us. We were attempting to pass between the realms. The land of the Kakatanawa lay not
in the looming mountains, but in the world beyond them, where this strange tribe guarded their treasures and their secrets
in mysterious ways.

As he danced I soon became aware of another presence, something drawn not by his summoning, but by the
smell
of his magic. And then at last I confirmed the identity of my particular enemy. An elemental but also a powerful Lord of
the Higher Worlds, Shoashooan, the Turning Wind, who was native to this realm and therefore more dangerous.

I heard rumbling. A distant storm gathered and moved in our direction. Purples, crimsons and dark greens flooded the sky.
They drew themselves across the
horizon like a veil, but almost immediately they began to join again, shrieking and threatening and forming into that familiar
leering, shifty, destructive fellow: Shoashooan, the Demon Wind, the Son Stealer, the Lord of the Tornadoes, the undisputed
ruler of the prairie, before whom all spirits and creatures of the plains were powerless. Lord Shoashooan in all his writhing,
twisting, shouting forms, his bestial features glaring out of his swirling body.

Standing on the right side of the Bringer of Ruins stood the Two Tongues, his body burning as his own life stuff was fed to
the summoned spirit. Ipkeptemi would not last long. On the other side of the furious spirit, his ragged buffalo cape flapping
and cracking in the blustering force from his new ally, was the ghastly, half-frozen figure of Klosterheim.

He might have been dead, turned to ice where he stood.

His lips were drawn back from his teeth.

For a moment I thought he was smiling.

Then I realized he was profoundly terrified.

Tread the path that shines like silver,

To the city made of gold,

Where the world-snake slowly dies.

Where a lance moans like a woman,

And the pipe denies all lies.

W. S. H
ARTE
,

“Onowega’s Death Song”

K
losterheim’s face was the last human thing I saw before the whirling Elemental Lord screeched and rose into the air. His limbs
and organs proliferated so rapidly that he now had a hundred hands, a thousand legs, all writhing and spinning. And every
limb held a shivering, slicing blade. The terrible, beastly face glowering and raging, he roared and railed as if something
were pulling him back where he had come from.

Still the Two Tongues burned, and still his life stuff
fed the Chaos Lord, giving him the substance he needed to remain in this realm. Yet it was an inexpert summons and therefore
perhaps only a partial manifestation. The shaman burned for nothing.

Something
was
driving Lord Shoashooan back.

White Crow was singing. His voice covered two octaves easily and rose and fell almost like the movement of the oceans. His
song was taken up by the mountains. Notes rippled from peak to peak, achieving their own strange, extended melody. Raising
his arms from where he stood beside that great black pachyderm, he flung back his head and sang again. His handsome, ivory
face shone with ecstasy. The red hawk feathers in his white hair were garish against his delicate coloring, emphasizing the
gemlike redness of his eyes. Behind him, in its quiver, the Black Lance began to vibrate to the same notes. It joined in the
song.

Lord Shoashooan growled and feinted and turned and keened, came closer and retreated. Then, with an angry howl, he vanished,
taking the two men with him.

“Those fools,” said White Crow. “They have neither the skills nor the powers to control such an entity. My grandfather banished
him. No human can destroy him once he has established himself in our world. We can only hope he failed to find true substance
and could not make a full manifestation.” He looked around, frowning. “Though here, it would be easy enough.”

I asked about the two men. He shook his head. He was sure they had not gone willingly.

“They summoned a monster, and it devoured them,” said Ayanawatta. “Perhaps that is the end of it. If Lord
Shoashooan had been able to secure his manifestation, he would be free to feast however and wherever he chose. We can only
hope that two amateur sorcerers were enough for him. Lord Shoashooan is infamous for his lethal whimsicalities, his horrible
jokes, his relish for flesh.”

Glancing to my left I saw the strain on White Crow’s face. Here was proof that Lord Shoashooan’s disappearance had not been
voluntary. I was impressed. Few had the strength and skill to oppose a Lord of the Higher Worlds. Had White Crow’s magic driven
the creature back to his own plane, taking with him as trophies those who hoped to evoke his aid?

A light wind danced around us.

White Crow lifted his head and began to sing and drum again, and again Ayanawatta joined with him in the music. I found that
wordlessly I, too, was singing in harmony with my comrades. Through our song we sought to find our accord again, to set ourselves
back on our path, to be true to our stories.

White Crow’s small hand-drum began to pound more rapidly, like the noise of a sudden downpour. Faster and faster he moved
his stick back and forth, back and forth, around and around, down the side, against the bottom, back up the side to finish
in a pulsating rhythm which would strengthen our medicine. Slowly the beats grew further apart.

The wind began to flutter and die away. The sun came out again in a single silver band slanting through billowing clouds and
cut a wide swathe across the prairie.

White Crow continued to beat his drum. Very slowly he beat it. And his new song was deep and deliberate.

The shining path of cold sunlight fell until it lay before us, stretching out from our strange ice temple and disappearing
towards those wild, high mountains. This silvery trail surely led to a pass through the mountains. A pass which would take
us to the land of the Kakatanawa. A pass which began to reveal itself like a long crack in the granite of the mountains.

The clouds boiled in, and the sun was lost again.

But that gleaming, single, silvery beam remained. A magic path through the mountains.

White Crow stopped drumming. Then he stopped singing. The light of day dimmed beneath the heavy snow clouds. But the silver
road remained.

White Crow was clearly satisfied. This was his work. Ayanawatta congratulated him enthusiastically, and while it was not good
manners to show emotional response to such praise, White Crow was quietly pleased with himself.

He had sung and drummed a pathway into the next realm. He and Ayanawatta had woven it from the gossamer stuff of the Grey
Fees, creating the harmonies and resonances necessary to walk safely perhaps only a short distance between two worlds.

Ironically I reflected on their envy of my skills. I could walk at will across the moonbeam roads, while they had immense
difficulty. But I was not a creator as they were. I could not fashion the roads themselves. The only danger now was that Shoashooan
would follow us through the gateway we had made.

With light steps we restored the saddle to Bes’s back and adjusted our canoe canopy. White Crow then urged his old friend
to move on.

I watched her set those massive feet on the pathway we could now see through the snow. She was confident and cheerful as she
carried us forward. When I looked back, I saw that the road had not faded behind us as we progressed over it. Did that mean
Klosterheim or one of his allies could now easily follow us?

Bes trod the crystal trail with an air of optimistic familiarity. Indeed there was something jaunty about the mighty mammoth
as she carried us along, her own brilliant feathers now held securely in a sort of topknot. I wondered if there were any other
mammoths to whom she could tell her stories, or would she be remembered only in our own tales?

The prairie lay under thick snow. There was nothing supernatural about it. You could taste the sharp snowflakes, see the hawks
and eagles turning in the currents high overhead. In a sudden flurry a small herd of antelope sprang from cover nearby and
fled over the snow, leaving a dark trail behind them. There were tracks of hares and raccoons.

We had plenty of provisions, and there was no need to leave the tentlike interior of the makeshift howdah. While the mammoth
plodded through deep snow, for us this journey was sheer luxury.

Once in the distance we saw a bear walking ahead of us along the trail, but he soon blundered off into the brush near a creek,
and we lost sight of him. For some time Ayanawatta and White Crow discussed the
possibility that this was a sign. They eventually decided that the bear had no special symbolic meaning. For several hours
Ayanawatta expounded on the nature of bear-spirits and bear-dreams while White Crow nodded agreeably, occasionally confirming
an anecdote, always preferring to be the audience.

Slowly the mountains grew larger and larger until we were looking up at their tree-covered lower slopes. The silver trail
led through the foothills and into the pass. The two men became quietly excited. Neither had been sure the magic would work,
and even now they were unsure of the consequences. Would there be a price to pay? I was in awe of their power, and so were
they!

The snow started to fall steadily. Bes seemed to enjoy it. Perhaps her great woolly coat was designed for such weather. Snow
soon banked itself on both sides of us, as the trail grew rockier. We entered the deep, dark fissure which would lead us to
the land of the Kakatanawa. Here little snow had settled, and it was still possible to see the trail ahead.

I had not expected further attack, certainly not from above. But in an instant the air was thick with ravens. The huge, black
birds swarmed around us, cawing and clacking at us as if we invaded their territory. I could not bring myself to shoot at
them, and neither could my companions. White Crow said the black ravens were his cousins. They all served the same queen.

The noise of the attack was distracting, however, and disturbing to Bes. After some twenty minutes of enduring this, White
Crow stood up in the saddle and let out
a tremendous cackle of angry song which silenced the ravens.

Seconds later the big birds had settled on outcrops of rock. They sat waiting, heads to one side, black eyes shining, listening
as White Crow continued his irritable address. It was clear how he had come by his name and no doubt his totem. He spoke their
language fluently, with nuances which even these rowdy aggressors could appreciate. I was amused that he spoke so little in
human language and could be so eloquent in the tongue of a bird. When I asked him about it, he said that the language of dragons
was not dissimilar, and both came easily to him.