SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 5: Threads of Iron (part 1 of 2)

Tull ran limping down the road to Fava, and together they hurried to Chaa's house.

Chaa's spacious home had a front of red stone, but much of it was merely a cave, excavated into the back of a hill. Well tanned mammoth hides served as summer doors.

Tull stumbled into the darkness. He was familiar with every twist in the tunnels of the house, but the darkness forced him to halt while his eyes adjusted to the shadows.

Fava pushed him down a winding hallway, guiding him through the dark tunnel as if he were a stranger, her hands almost caressing, in the manner of the Pwi. They soon reached Chaa's "spell room."

The room was made of crude walls hewn into the sandstone. Shelves along one wall held dozens of earthen jars filled with ointments and healing oils, while bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling-garlic and lavender, pennyroyal and dried seaweed. Their smell was overwhelming, mixed as it was with the pungent odor of Chaa's sweat.

He lay on the floor, on the striped hide of a smilodon. He was nearly naked, wearing only a black loincloth and a light-gray vest painted with crows and mice. His legs poked out from under his clothes like oblong brown sticks, and his wife, Zhopila, bent over him, trying to spoon broth down his throat. The room was cool and moist, yet Chaa glistened with sweat.

His yellow hair was chopped off short, and his yellow eyes glittered under his deep brows. As soon as Tull saw Chaa, he knew something was wrong. The Pwi call themselves the "smiling people," for they are nearly always happy by nature, but Chaa's face was drawn tight with pain and horror.

He looked up at Tull, as if relieved, and then ordered the women, "Leave us, please. Leave us alone. Go outside, far away."

The women looked at one another, as if unsure what he meant. The Pwi seldom kept secrets from each other, and his request baffled them.

"Please," Chaa begged, and the women hurried from the house, ran out into the sunlight, far away.

Tull took a seat, cross-legged on the floor, and Chaa stared at him from beneath heavy brows, eyes glittering. Chaa was young for a Spirit Walker, only thirty-five, but his magic had aged him. He was also a very kind man, good to his seven children.

Chaa tried to smile, but his face twisted into a painful mimic of a smile. "Help me sit," he said. Tull grabbed Chaa's elbows and pulled him up, leaning him against a pillow.

"Are you ill?" Tull asked.

"Just very weak," Chaa apologized. "My teacher taught me that 'A five-day fast is the beginning of power.' So I starve myself for five days before I take my Spirit Walk, and I drink very little water. It focuses the mind, and brings me close enough to death so I can leave my body, and then walk the paths of the future. Because of this, people think I am something!" He spat the words as if they were bitter herbs from the ceiling above. "But as you shall see, I am nothing! I walk the paths of the future, but the paths branch at every step. I try to guide the Pwi, but how do you guide them when all the paths twist the wrong way? My master always said, 'Once you take a Spirit Walk, you can never go home.' Your perceptions are opened, and you see things in a different way. Never has this been more true than tonight."

Chaa's chest heaved. He suddenly grew sober, sweat streaming from his face as if the exertion caused him great pain, and said: "In eleven days Scandal the Gourmet will leave to catch his serpents. Go with him. If he is to succeed, you must capture the serpents. Only you. You must take Ayuvah and Little Chaa with you to build the road."

Tull watched him for a long moment. Catching the serpents did not seem like a big job. It would be like catching guppies in an earthenware jar-except that these guppies were ten feet long with teeth of steel. Still, it seemed that others should be able to help.