The Skrayling Tree (15 page)

Whatever he said to the ravens, he did not drive them away. But at least it stopped the noise. Now they sat along both sides
of our path, occasionally croaking out a complaint or chittering among themselves. Then with a snap and shuffle of their wings,
the ravens took to the air, flooding upwards in a long, ragged line towards the distant sky, cawing back at us after they
had gained a certain distance. Birds usually felt benign towards humans, but these were clearly the exception.

As we continued down the great cleft in the rock, surprisingly I began to feel a claustrophobia I had never known on the moonbeam
roads. The day became so overcast and the cliffs so steep that we could not easily see the sky. The pathway shone no brighter,
and we might not have known it was there, save for the banked snowdrifts.

Night fell, and still we followed the glistening path
until we came to a place where the trail widened. Here we camped, listening to the strange sounds in the cliffs, where unfamiliar
animals scuttled and foraged. Bes was eager to continue. She had not wanted to rest, but we thought it best to catch our breath
while we could.

In the morning I awoke to discover that we had again been camping in an ancient holy place. Our shelter was the neglected
entrance to a huge stone temple whose roof had long since fallen in. Its walls were carved with dozens of regular pictograms
in an obscure language. The elements had worn them to an even more mysterious smoothness. Two vast nonhuman figures on either
side of the pass were obviously male and female. The natural rock overhead had been carved into an arch to represent their
hands touching, symbolizing the Unity of Life.

Ayanawatta asked if we might pause while he studied these massive pillars. He smiled as he ran his hands over the figures.
He seemed to be reading the glyphs, for his lips were moving. Then I thought that he might be praying.

He rejoined us in a good mood and climbed up to find some of his herbs and smoking mixture in his stowed bundle. These he
held in one hand while he dismounted again from Bes and ran quickly to both pillars, sprinkling a little of the mixture at
the base of each statue.

He sighed his contentment. “They say these two are the first male and the first female, turned to stone by the Four Great
Manitoos. It was their punishment for telling
the Stone Giants the secret path to the tree which the Kakatanawa now guard. We call them the Grandsires. They gave birth
to our world’s four tribes. They are monuments to our past and our future.”

He frowned at the carvings as we rode past them. He seemed surprised they were so inanimate. “When I was last here, they had
more life. They were happier.”

He looked up into the dark crags and sighed. “There is great trouble now, I think. There’s no certainty we shall save anything
from the struggle.”

After we passed under the arch, the quality of light subtly changed. Even the echoes were of a different nature. If we were
not already in the land of the Kakatanawa, we were beginning to enter their jurisdiction. I thought I saw shadows above us,
heard the skip of a stone, a muffled exclamation. But perhaps it was only the clatter of our own progress.

I wondered if the tree the Kakatanawa said they guarded was really a tree or perhaps merely a symbol, a contradictory core
lying at the heart of their beliefs.

For long periods in that dark crevasse, I thought we were never going to be free of a universe of rock. The sheer sides threatened
to narrow so much as to become impassable, yet somehow we squeezed through even the tightest gap.

The path went relentlessly forward, and relentlessly we followed it until it widened and we saw before us a huge lake of ice
which the mountains encircled. Spectacular and vast under the clearing pewter sky, the pale, frozen lake was not, however,
what captured our attention.

Ayanawatta let out a high, long whistle, but I could not speak for wonder.

Only White Crow knew the place. He gave a grunt of recognition. Nothing I had heard could have prepared me for my first sight
of the Kakatanawa “longhouse.”

While it was easy to see how the phrase fitted the conception, the reality was utterly unlikely. Their long-house was not
only the size of a mountain, it appeared to be made of solid gold!

Standing about a mile from the shore, this mighty, glittering pyramid rose at the center of the frozen lake. The Kakatanawa
longhouse dominated even the brooding peaks which completely surrounded it.

Under a paling blue sky reflected in the great plain of ice, Kakatanawa gleamed. An immense ziggurat, as high as a skyscraper,
it was an entire city in a single structure. The base was at least a mile wide, and the tiers marched up, step by enormous
step, to a crown where what might be a temple blazed.

The city was alive with activity. I could see ranks of people moving back and forth between the levels, the gardens which
draped startling greenery over balconies and terraces. I saw transports and dray animals. It was an entire country in a single
immense building! While it sat on an island, I guessed that it also extended below the ice. Was there never a time when the
ice melted, or were we now so far north that the lake remained forever frozen?

I could not contain myself.

“A city of gold! I never believed such a legend!”

Ayanawatta began to laugh, and White Crow smiled
at my astonishment. “All that glistens is not gold,” he said ironically. “The plaster contains iron pyrites and copper powder,
perhaps a little gold and silver, but not much. The reflective mixture produces a more durable material. And it suits their
other purposes to make Kakatanawa shine like gold. I do not know whether the city or the myth came first. There is a legend
among the Mayans about this city, but they think it is further south and east. No Kakatanawa can ever reveal the location
of his home to strangers.”

“Are we not strangers?” I asked.

He began to laugh. “Not exactly,” he said.

“The name of the city is the same as that of your tribe?”

“The Kakatanawa are the People of the Circle, the People of the Great Belt, so called because they have traveled the entire
circle of the world and returned to their ancestral home. Everywhere they went they left their mark and their memory. They
are the only people to do this thing and understand what they have done. Even the Norsemen have not done that. This is Odan-a-Kakatanawa,
if you prefer. The Longhouse of the People of the Circle. It is this people’s destiny to guard the great belt, the story of
the world’s heart.”

“And is that where I will find my husband?” My own heart had begun to beat rapidly. I controlled my breathing to bring it
back to normal. I longed to see Ulric, safe and well and in my arms again.

“You will find him.” White Crow for some reason avoided my eye.

There was no doubt in my mind that the Kakatanawa
had kidnapped Ulric and brought him here. Now perhaps all I had to do was storm a city-sized pyramid! I hoped that my association
with White Crow would make that unnecessary.

I believed I was approaching a people whose motives were mysterious and possibly thoughtless, but who were not malevolent.
Of course, my feelings were subjective. I could not help liking the youth, who might have been a son, and there was no doubt
I felt a daughter’s security in the company of the older sachem, Ayanawatta, so talkative and humorous, so full of idealism
and common sense. There was a fitting unity about our trinity. But it was Ulric who remained my chief concern. While certain
I would find him here, I still did not know why he had been brought here or, indeed, how White Crow had known where to find
the medicine shield.

A sharp wind was beginning to blow from the east, and we sank deeper into our furs. I could smell every kind of sorcery on
that wind. I remained confused, uncertain of its source or its purpose.

The faint path of silver continued to cross the ice. It ended at the great golden pillars which supported what could only
be the main gate with heavy doors of bronze and copper. The city’s architecture was covered in complicated carvings and paintings
of the most exquisite workmanship. I remembered the Sinhalese temples of Anuradhapura. Scarcely an inch was undecorated. From
this distance it was impossible to make out anything but the largest details. Each tier of the ziggurat’s extraordinary structure
abounded with doors and windows. The
population of a small town must live on each of the lower levels. Other levels were clearly cultivated, so that Kakatanawa
was entirely self-supporting. She could resist any siege.

I asked a stupid question. “Will the ice bear Bes’s weight?”

White Crow turned his head, smiling. “Bes is home,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

It was true that the amiable mammoth looked more alert, excited. Did she still have a family in Kakatanawa? I imagined stables
full of these massive, good-natured beasts.

White Crow added, “This ice is thicker than the world. It goes down forever.”

Then, as we continued to move forward, the mountains shook and grumbled. Dark clouds swirled around their peaks. The sky became
alive with racing shafts of yellow, dark green and deep blue, all crackling and roaring, rumbling and shrieking. A wild screeching.

I reached for my bow, but I felt sick. I knew very well what that noise heralded.

Lord Shoashooan, the Demon of the Whirlwind, appeared before us.

His dark, conical shape was more stable. The wide top whirled, and the tip twisted into the ice, sending out a blur of chips.
I could see his flickering, bestial features, his cruel, excited eyes. It was as if Klosterheim and the Two Tongues had released
him from some prison, where he had been frustrated in his work of destruction. We had not driven him away. We had merely made
him retreat to reconsider his strategy.

There again on one side of him stood Klosterheim, shivering in his agitated cloak, while all that was left of the Two Tongues
lay dying, breath hissing in the corner of his horrible, toothy mouth. Klosterheim had the air of a man who believed his odds
of survival small.

White Crow flung up his arm, waving his great black-bladed spear. “Ho! Would a mere breath of air stop me from returning to
Kakatanawa with the Black Lance? Do you know what you challenge, Lord Shoashooan?”

Klosterheim spoke through cracked lips over the shriek. “He knows. And he knows how to stop you. Time will freeze, as this
lake is frozen. It will allow me to do everything I must do. Your medicine is weak now, White Crow. Soon the Pukawatchi will
come and destroy you and take back the things which are their own.”

White Crow frowned at this. Was it true? Had he expended all his power in conjuring the Shining Path?

Behind the great Lord of All Winds the golden city sparked and shifted so that sometimes it seemed only a vision, a projection,
an illusion. Not a real place at all. Beyond us, nothing moved. Time did indeed seem to have stopped.

White Crow bowed his head. “I am their last White Crow man,” he said. “If I do not bring them back the Black Lance, it will
not only be the last of the Kakatanawa, it will be the last we shall ever know of the multiverse, save that final, eternal
second before oblivion. He has seen that my medicine is now weak. I have no charms or rituals strong enough to defend us against
the anger of Shoashooan.”

He looked desperately to Ayanawatta, who replied gravely. “You must fly to the Isle of Morn and find help. You know this is
what we planned.”

White Crow said, “I will use the last of my magic. Bes will stay here with you. I will send you the help you need. But know
how dangerous this will be for all of us.”

“I understand.” Ayanawatta turned to me. “It is for you to help us now, my friend.”

Then without another word, White Crow was leaving us. I watched in astonishment as he ran swiftly away. He ran through the
foothills and was soon lost from sight. I almost wept at his deserting us. I would never have anticipated it.

Klosterheim cackled. “So the heroes show their real characters. You are not fit enough for these tasks, my friends. You challenge
forces far too great.”

I took my bow and stepped forward. Perhaps in my right mind I would have shot Klosterheim. I knew a kind of cold anger. I
longed to be reunited with my husband, and I was determined not to be stopped. I do not know what instinct informed me, but
I forced myself to walk closer and closer to the shrieking madness that was Lord Shoashooan, fitting an arrow to my bow. I
could see a face in the center of the tornado. That same fierce, white-hot anger remained. I knew nothing of fear as I loosed
my first arrow into Lord Shoashooan’s forehead.

Without thought, I nocked and loosed again. My second arrow took him in the right eye. The third arrow took him in the left
eye.

He began to squeal and bellow in outrage. Bizarre limbs clutched at his head. I knew Lord Shoashooan could not be killed so
easily. My idea was to try to stay out of his reach and, like a bull terrier, worry at him until he was weak enough to be
overcome.

It was no doubt a stupid idea, but I did not have a better one!

I had been too confident. I had only blinded the monster for a few seconds. Before I knew it, he seized me in his icy tendrils
and drew me closer and closer to his chuckling maw. I could reach no more arrows. All I had was my bow. I flung the staff
into that horrible mouth.

Lord Shoashooan’s many eyes glared. He gagged. I had caused some sort of convulsion. He scraped at his mouth and clutched
his throat, and suddenly the sentient tornado flung me away.

I saw gleaming white all around me as I fell heavily to the ice. I was dazed and barely conscious. I forced myself to gather
my strength.

I knew I had no other choice.

For a moment I refused the inevitable, but it was a pointless rebellion. I knew it as I made it. I could still hear the terrible
howling and clawing of Lord Shoashooan as he wrestled with the bowstave I had flung into his maw.

I, too, had a preordained story in this world. A story which I must follow in spite of myself.