___________________________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **** ** ** ** ** The **** THERWORLD CHAPTER 25 (> Other Peoples <) Copyright 1992 by Bryce Koike All Rights Reserved ___________________________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Any comments, criticisms, opinions, etc, are welcome. I can be reached on Internet as: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when light comes the heart of the people is always right." (John Muir) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "Pain from pearls -- hey little girl -- how much have you grown? Pain from pearls -- hey little girl -- flowers for the ones you've known. Are you on fire? From the years? What would you give for your kid fears? Secret staircase, running high, You had a hiding place. Secret staircase, running low, But they all know, now you're inside." ("Kid Fears" -- Indigo Girls) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- On Victory In other places, there are other battles against other evils. The victory for Good will not come from one being but from many spread across this place we call the Otherworld. There will be no one sacrifice which will save this land but many, hundreds of thousands lives dead and gone before we can find our peace. So it goes. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Date: October 4, 1992 Location: Northern California, Otherworld Time: 2:00 pm The Norwell/Demon worked up a furious hiking pace as they trekked, moving inward from the cliff and the frightening view there. Every half hour he'd look behind and Angela would be far, far behind. By the time she caught up, exhausted, he'd already be bellowing at her, his hands curling up into claws again and again as if he'd love to just rip her face off. "Stupid, slow girl," he hissed. "Better if I'd left you back where I found you! Stupid, useless girl! You'd better learn to walk faster or next time I might not stop to wait. And what if you got yourself lost, eh? What then? What would poor Angela do then, hmm? Let me tell you. You'd die and the vultures would pick the meat off of your corpse, that's what. So if you want to live, you'd better learn to walk faster." Angela just looked toward the ground and nodded. Her probes at Norwell had hit a blank wall, as if he had ceased to exist and instead she was probing at something else. Her mind revolved around and around that shield and never encountered something tangible. It was as diffuse as smoke, yet unyielding in the end. And if the Demon found out what she was doing . . . Angela knew, absolutely knew, that then she would die. So with relief, she snaked back her mental probe and sealed herself up as tight as she could go. There had to be another way. Every step Norwell took spoke of anger and hate, hate and anger. Each foot fall was an attempt to stamp out a part of the forest which Norwell found offensive. Every stride was made in an attempt to push him further toward his destination without any heed to the scenery which passed them. Angela understood the change now which had come over him and the change which had seperated Norwell into two personalities. It was the work of a Demon, a newly-freed Demon which had taken to imprisoning others in its hate-infested prison. "Demon rattles the eldritch chains which bind him. He is alone in his cell for he devours all within reach. He snarls. His spittle is acid, his blood poison. The sight of his eyes means death. His voice is Corruption. And none can satiate his empty stomach," was what Matt had written. She shivered as the memory brought back old horror. "Come on, girl, move your clumsy feet!" yelled Norwell. "We've got miles to cover today." Angela sighed inside and put her hands on her shoulder straps to prepare for the journey ahead. Norwell kept up his furious pace with only an occasional rest for her. He'd drink angrily at his water bottle, stuff some food into his mouth and grind away at it with a look in his eye that told her he wished it was Angela he was grinding up and grinding up. Then he'd stuff the food and water away, and without a word, storm off, following some unspoken path toward an unknown destination. Always far behind him was Angela, stumbling as fatigue grew on her, stumbling behind him and trying to keep up, keep the crazy man in sight, because she knew that she really would die if she was left out in the forest alone, because the forest would know that she was a stranger to it and it would slowly take her, just like the human body attacked intruders in its blood stream. As she caught herself from a potentially nasty trip, Angela let out a shuddering sigh. It was going to be a long, long day for her and at the end of it she'd be cooking dinner and cleaning out the pots afterward while Norwell raged on and on. "The things I do for you," she said. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Date: October 4, 1992 Location: Russia, Otherworld Time: 6:00 am Shimoya raised the goggles to his eyes and viewed the world in its hues of temperature, most of the ground emanating a dark, dark blue. Snow. He knew that the goggles were useless to use them anyway; those who hunted them were not truly alive. He pulled the parka around him tighter and damned the laws which shrouded this section of Russia in eternal darkness. Somewhere, to the north, there rose a tower built of skulls both human and animal, and there lay the Lord of Hate who was even now hunting them. He had sent his minions, the Makrag, the soul reavers, to find them, and to eat them. Mullov settled near him. In the hazy light of what they assumed to be the sun, Shimoya could see Mullov's breath clearly, almost like ice dust in the wind. Mullov had his goggles off as well. "Cold day, you think?" asked Mullov. "Snow maybe?" Shimoya shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not." Mullov nodded in agreement. "Petra is sick," he said. She'd caught something -- something unnatural, and it was starting to eat her inside out. If she didn't get help from a Wild Woman or other nature magician, she would surely die. Shimoya cursed, cursed the rifts which brought him here, cursed the laws of the Otherworld which made magic true. "Will she live the night?" asked Shimoya. If they couldn't move her, then they would have to stay by her side, hoping that her condition would improve. In the meantime, the Makrag would be hunting them down. "Petra will not leave here." Shimoya sighed. Food was very, very low. Petra was their only food-sayer, one who could call edibles from the ground and turn the poisoned snow to pure, cold ice. Without her, they would die, and they had no bloodmark to look into her body and cure what ailed her, for Mendel had died from a spike through the eye in a night sneak attack. "Petra wishes to see you before her time comes." Shimoya nodded. He had been the senior officer of the Augustus before there had been a disturbance of some sort. She'd never been built for planetfall and they'd struck ground hard when the rift had deposited them in the Otherworld. The ship broke apart, shattered, and spread its contents along twenty long miles, killing most of her passengers as it burned bright enough to light the night into day. The people of new-Russia had called him Burning Sky Man like he was a prophet and handed him their magic totems and told him that he had to fight the Hate Man, the Lord of Hate. His army was a hand-picked few toting a wild assortment of weapons ranging from revolvers and torchers to bent iron swords and pikes. Petra lay in the warm-bed that they had laid out, lit by the fire beside her, but still her face was white. The sickness that had been eating her insides had turned her outer skin hard and with time it cracked and oozed thick blood. Her eyes had practically scabbed over. Shimoya could barely look at her without his heart aching; she had been a beautiful woman before. Her rough hand took his and she seemed to find some solace in that. She smiled, though he knew that it pained her to do so. "Burning Sky Man," she whispered, her voice gravelled and thick. Her throat too? "You fell from the sky and burned up our crops with your twisted metal. You came to free us. A dying earthwoman has power in her Burning Sky Man, do you want to know what that power is?" Shimoya looked into her eyes which still burned clear, though pained. "I don't know," he answered. Her grip tightened on his hand. "Burning Sky Man, a dying earthwoman has a power, has a gift which must be given for to keep it is selfish. It is the power of her talent, to be passed on to her girl-child, but I have no girl to pass my love to." She caughed and spasmed. The time must be near. "Burning Sky Man, if you are to free us, you must take my gift!" she croaked. Shimoya shook his head. "No, Petra, I can't do that!" he said. "I'm- I'm not a earthworker. I'm not a mage. I can't do magic." Petra's eyes flared with magic, the fire dancing on the edges of her pupils. "Burning Sky Man," she shrieked, "free my people, I beg you!" She cried and it mixed with the crusted blood to make it run down the sides of her face in clear rivulets. "I- oh, Petra!" cried Shimoya and he grabbed her frail body and pressed his face agaist her shoulder, felt her life's heat, felt her tiny heart pulse. Petra's hands wrapped around him, spreading the blood across his parka's back, and he could feel her heat rising and rising until it consumed him and he cried out, for the world, the dead world, it was alive. But Petra, she was dead, or at least the shell that had been her body was. Shimoya released it with no reluctance and watched it slowly turn within itself until it was little more than ashes. Inside him burned her heart's fire and he knew that he'd only have to look there to find her staring back at him. But he couldn't do that, not yet. Shimoya turned his sight outward and looked at the land about him and he felt its pain. He felt its life. "Mullov," he called out. "Bring up those who need food and drink and I will call it." Mullov turned from the group fire and stared in awe. Shimoya smiled. "Petra has done her duty and passed her love on. Now call up the hungry and thirsty so that they may eat and drink." He turned his heart's voice to the land and asked it kindly for food. Through its pain, it smiled back at him and opened its own heart to him. There, and there, he could find them. Food for the eating, ice for the drinking. His heart's hands reached down and pulled them to the surface. Mullov's hand rested on his shoulder. The blacksmith looked at Shimoya with new respect. "You truly are the Burning Sky Man," Mullov said with eyes flooded with tears. "You will give our people freedom." Shimoya clutched his hand next to his heart. He had power, true, and he could lead, but how could he combat a force that could poison the land for so far? How could he fight the Hate Man in his tower of skulls atop the hill of blood? How could he keep them alive for one more day as the Makrag closed in on them? And god, when would he see day again? At a time that they could only assume was noon, Wyakurro let rise a shout, for her talent was that of far-seeing and in the distance on the long, flat plain, she had seen the Makrag. "Oh, Burning Sky Man," she crooned, "let me cut them down into their poison ice with my burner." It was a joke for the ice only covered hard, solid ground, and her torcher hardly had the range. Shimoya shook his head and told his people to continue forward. He slowed the pace. Running was useless, but he couldn't let them wait for hours. No, he wanted to be as near the forest to the north as they could possibly be before they were overrun. "I don't understand it," muttered Yusuf. "I thought for sure we slipped them a week ago." Shimoya said, "I think it's the ground. I think that somehow the Hate Man tracks us through the ground." Yusuf spat. "Too bad a shuttle didn't make it out of the Augustus. That woulda been nice, real nice. Like to see the look on the Hate Man's face when we burned his castle down with plasma." Grim, Shimoya pushed on. Indifference, indecision, that could bring death out in the snow. Wetness, that was a greater evil, for as the winds swept by, they could rob your body of its heat and if allowed to continue, you'd die as sure as if a Makrag had thrust an ice spike into your heart. Every breath you took, sucking in the invisible fumes from the poison snow, that was a breath closer to death. You had to be careful each night to lay out your clothes well on the warm beds and then snuggle deep under its forth layer and hope it didn't snow. Worse if it rained, for after rain always came the Bitter Winds riding down the clouds from the north to tear you down. Had to be careful that you didn't sleep too close to the poison snow unless you wanted to wake up never in the morning like careless Rizzo. Each step Shimoya took was a muffled cry from the earth as it felt the poison bite deeper still. That was the Hate Man's plan -- poison the land forever so that even if the snow melted, the poison would be so deep that nothing could live, that the rivers, streams, and lakes would run deep with poison. So deep that the clouds would rain poison and the fog would bring death wherever it passed. And when they had run until the Makrag was almost upon them, Shimoya ordered a stop and they prepared themselves, grim and ready, for the battle. Softly, dim silhouettes on the horizon, came the Makrag over a hill, ice spikes in ragged claws, hate in every step. Mullov tapped his maul gently in one hand and grinned savagely at Shimoya, then the Makrag fell upon them, silent, raging, and blood flew. Shimoya's new senses told him where to put his feet and the land promised that it would hold him, always hold him, even unto his death. And the three charms that flared at his chest told him how to swing the iron sword in his hands and showed him how to deflect blows that would otherwise take his life. As always, the Makrag made no sound, not even as they fell. Shimoya and the people of Russia had never found a way to kill a Makrag, but it was possible to dismember them enough that it would take them weeks to recover. There were folk tales of village people dismembering a Makrag and setting its limbs against its body so that they grew back wrong with legs for its arms and arms for its legs and a head where its genitals laid. As the tale went, the Makrag lumped off to the hills never to return, but Shimoya knew from painful sacrifice that no Makrag could ever grow back wrong. He lopped off fingers with one slice and as he recovered, the iron sword tore the Makrag's head from its shoulders. Makrag ice spikes were made from hell-bent ice, the poison ice of the Hate Man, harder than steel, colder than the coldest cold, and sharp enough to cut glass. Shimoya watched in dismay as two members of their war party were cut down, spikes jutting rudely from their bodies, and he cried out as he felt the land scream with pain. Mullov laid about himself with the maul, crushing in the craggy heads of the Makrag with it, tossing them carelessly away, and he bellowed. No, no, not Helen. Wyakurro struck about herself like an amazon tall and vibrant as she fought. There were scratches on her arms from where spikes had nearly struck her, but she seemed immune to such small amounts of poison. She severed hands and left the Makrags to trying to beat against her with torn stumps. When her swords passed their way again, they lost their legs. It was Helen, her throat already puffing from the poison and the spike as it melted and mixed with her life's blood. In the back of his mind, Shimoya could hear the rude cackle of the poison as it ate her life away. "No!" he screamed, but he was not a bloodmark and there was nothing he could do for the woman. Mullov stood above his wife and laid about him wildly, though he was blinded with his own tears. No blow touched him. Shimoya was crying too, for he could hear the land's cries as his friends died. That night, Alasta burrowed away a shallow grave so that the dead could be buried. Shimoya's voice caught in his throat to the point where he could say nothing for them. And so in silence, Alasta covered the bodies up and sealed the land about them until there was no sign of the pit which he had made. Mullov seemed a man of fifty as he watched the first particles of frozen dirt hit the body of his wife, as the land slowly covered her in the cold. That night, Shimoya could not sleep. The land still cried out. There was nothing he could do to silence it. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- The Eternal mindover carelessly walked through the small town. It was shielded from any normal sight, it had not worries. It turned the corner and stared into horror. There lay the bodies of two warriors, their heads and chests bloody. Even as it babbled a warning to its people, it knew that there was someone behind it. It turned and saw a woman emerge from a door across the street, brown hair tied strictly back to make way for the infrared goggles she wore on her face. The rifle she held was military and as she pulled the trigger, the mindover knew it would die. The gun gave a little splutter from the silencer and a bullet took the mindover directly in the head. "That's three," Tracy called into the headset. "Let's get the hell out of here." "Roger that." Vince drove up in the jeep and Tracy got on. He looked at her for a long time, worried, before they went on their way. In the back of the jeep was a soldier, one of the few that Bryant had been willing to spare for them. Her name was Valerie and she was a psychic. "They're coming, but they won't be in time," she said. Vince nodded and pushed the gas down a little further. No need to take any unnecessary risks. How long before their little guerilla game was played out? And why in the world did he agree to it all? "We're heading out to point Beta Three," Tracy said as she checked her notes. "That'll be our next rest stop for a few days. Valerie, contact the other units and get them in gear. And I want all the information you've got on Kansas City." "We going to Kansas?" Vince asked. She shook her head. "Not us. But I may want to send a detachment there. There's been some talk about a Kansas Free State that I want to know more about." "Free state? You mean like government?" She nodded. "Electricity, too. And paranormals." Vince suddenly understood. The government, the electricity, and the things that came with it, that didn't mean very much to their effort. But the paranormals, those were. They were people like Valerie and Matt, normal humans who had somehow been imbued with powers upon their arrival to the Otherworld. Where paranormals walked the earth, changes soon followed. They didn't seem capable of treading softly no matter where they went. It seemed a heavy responsibility. "We need an army, Vince," Tracy said as they headed down the highway. "I don't think we'll be able to keep this up for even a week longer. We need an army and we need one fast. Remind me to speak with Martique when we reach Beta Three." "Right." Vince glanced at her as she brooded. A heavy exercise regimen had turned her city-soft body hard and he could see muscle beginning to form along her shoulders and arms. She looked like a haunted woman now, or was that hunted? He wanted to know what it was on those tapes of Matt's that had affected her, but she was so damn defensive of them that he knew better. In fact, the whole subject of Matt was completely off-limits for her. He wondered if she had loved him in the end. "Nah," he said to himself softly. "Couldn't be." An army. Tracy wanted a damned army. "Shit," thought Vince. So then she was getting serious, very serious. And she was in it for the duration. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Inside, Roger was screaming, his mind thrust into flames that threatened to consume and consume, but all he could feel was the flame. It torched across his brain and burrowed into his most tender spots, burned and laughed there, ridiculing, hating. Roger instantly knew what it was -- it was his innermost beast. The Beast laughed at him as it hurt him over and over. "See your leash!" it cried. "This is the leash you gave me yourself! Welcome to your own hell!" Roger wanted to bend over and cry, but the pain was overpowering. He watched himself nearly -- just nearly reach out to hurt Angela, to kill her, to rip apart her face and body, to mutilate her. But the Beast always stopped just before it and gloated there, gloated with the knowledge that it could make him do the worst horrors he thought possible. "Call me Beast or Demon," whispered the monster inside him, "I am your God now!" And it lifted its invisible head and laughed and laughed, then stepped down to crush the head of a small lizard in its path, grinding the boot around to make certain that its brains had been pulverized. All that echoed through Roger's mind was a soundless, mindless cry of anguish.