David Zindell - The Broken God

Later that night, above the cave, he buried Soli with the others. After he had hefted the last frozen boulder onto his grave, he prayed. ‘Soli, pela ur-padda, mi alasharia, shantih .’ He pressed his eyes hard before shaking his head and crying out, ‘Oh, Ahira, what shall I do?’

He fell into the dreamtime, then, and the wind through the trees answered him. There was a rush of air carrying the deep-throated hooing of the snowy owl. It was Ahira, his other-self. Perched high on a yu tree’s silvery branch, across the snow-covered graveyard, Ahira was looking through the darkness for him.

‘Ahira, Ahira.’

The owl’s snowy round head turned toward him. His eyes were orange and black, wild and infinitely wise.

‘Danlo, Danlo.’ The owl turned his head again, and there was a shimmer of starlight off his eyes. And Danlo suddenly beheld a part of the circle of halla : the World-soul did not intend for him to join the Patwin tribe, nor any other tribe of the islands to the west. Who was he to bear the taint of shaida to his uncles and cousins? No, he would not burden his people with such unspeakable sorrows. No matter how badly he needed to hear the whole Song of Life, his future and his fate did not lie in that direction.

I must journey east , he thought. I must go to the Unreal City alone.

Somehow he must make the impossible journey to the city called Neverness. And someday, to the stars. If the stars really were fusion fires burning in the night, they were part of a vast, larger world that must know halla , too.

To Ahira, he solemnly bowed his head. ‘ Mi alasharetha ,’ Danlo said, praying for that part of himself that had died. ‘Shantih.’

Then he turned his back to the wind and wept for a long time.

The organism is a theory of its environment.

– Walter Wiener, Holocaust Century Ecologist

It took Danlo nine days to prepare for his journey. Five days he spent in his snowhut, recovering from his cutting. He begrudged every day of it because he knew that the sledding across the eastern ice would be dangerous and long. According to Soli’s stories, the Unreal City lay at least forty days away – perhaps more. Since it was already 82nd day in deep winter, he couldn’t hope to reach the City until the middle of midwinter spring. And midwinter spring was the worst season for travel. Who could say when a fierce sarsara , the Serpent’s Breath, would blow in from the north, heralding many days of blizzard? If the storms delayed his crossing too long, he might be stranded far out on the Starnbergersee when false winter’s hot sun came out and melted the sea ice. And then he and his dogs would die. No, he thought, he must find the City long before then.

And so, when he deemed himself healed, he went out to hunt shagshay. Skiing through the valleys below Kweitkel was now very painful, since every push and glide caused his membrum to chafe against the inside of his trousers. Pissing could be an agony. The air stung the exposed red tip of his membrum whenever he paused to empty himself. Even so he hunted diligently and often because he needed a lot of meat. (Ice fishing through a hole in the stream’s ice would have been an easier source of food, but he found that the fatfish were not running that year.) He cut the meat and scant blubber into rations; he sealed the rich blood into waterproof skins; he entered the cave and raided the winter barrels of baldo nuts. Into his sled went carefully measured packets of food. Into his sled, he carefully stowed his oilstone, sleeping furs, bag of flints, and bear spear. And, of course, his long, barbed whalebone harpoon. The dogs could pull only so much weight. Somewhere to the east they would finish the last of the food, and he would use the harpoon to hunt seals.

On the morning of his departure he faced the first of many hard decisions: what to do with the dogs? He would need only seven dogs to pull the sled: Bodi, Luyu, Kono, Siegfried, Noe, Atal, and his best friend, Jiro. The others, the dogs of Wicent and Jaywe, and the other families of the tribe, he would have to let loose. Or kill. After he had loaded his sled, he paused to look at the dogs staked out near their snow dens at the front of the cave. There were fifty-nine of them, and they were watching him with their pale blue eyes, wagging their tales and whining. In truth, he knew it was his duty to kill them, for how would they live without men to get their food and comfort them when they were sick or lonely? The dogs would flee barking into the forest, and they would pack and try to hunt. The wolves, however, were better hunters than the dogs; the silent wolves would track and circle them, and they would kill the dogs one by one. Or they would die of hunger, with folds of flesh hanging loosely over their bones. The dogs would surely die, but who was he to kill them? He thought it would be better for them to know a single additional day of life, even if that day were filled with pain and terror. He looked over the treetops into the sky. It was sharda , a deep, deep blue. The deep sky, the green and white hills, the smells of life – even a dog could love the world and experience something like joy. Joy is the right hand of terror , he told himself, and he knew he wouldn’t steal the dogs away from life. He nodded his head decisively. He smiled and trudged up through the powdery snow to set them free.

The last thing he did before leaving was to press his forehead against the bare rocks near the mouth of the cave. He did this because Manwe, on the twelfth morning of the world, had performed just such a gesture before setting out on his journey to visit all the islands of God’s new creation. ‘ Kweitkel, narulanda ,’ he said, ‘farewell.’

With a whistle to his sled dogs he began his journey as all Alaloi men do: slowly, cautiously schussing through the forest down to the frozen sea. There, beyond the beach of his blessed island, the icefields began. The gleaming white ice spread out in a great circle, and far off, at the horizon, touched the sky. It was the oldest of teachings to live solely for the journey, taking each moment of ice and wind as it came. But because he was still a boy with wild dreams, he couldn’t help thinking of the journey’s end, of the Unreal City. That he would reach the City, he felt certain, although in truth, it was a journey only a very strong man should contemplate making alone. There was a zest and aliveness about him at odds with all that had happened. He couldn’t help smiling into the sunrise, into the fusion fire glistering red above the world’s rim. Because he was hot with excitement, he had his snow goggles off and his hood thrown back. The wind lashed his hair; it almost tore away Ahira’s shining white feather. His face was brown against the white ruff of his hood. It was a young face, beardless and full of warmth and hope, but for all that, a strong, wild face cut with sun and wind and sorrow. With his long nose puffing steam and his high cheekbones catching the glint of the snowfields, there was a harshness there, softened only by his eyes. He had unique eyes, large and blue-black like the early evening sky. Yujena oyu , as the Alaloi say – eyes that see too deeply and too much.

Danlo handled the sled and guided the dogs across the ragged drift ice with skill and grace. Many times Haidar and he had made such outings, though they had never travelled very far from land. Six hundred miles of frozen sea lay before him, but he knew little of distances measured in this manner. For him and his panting dogs, each segment of ice crossed was a day, and each day rose and fell with the rhythm of eating, sledding, and sawing the blocks of snow that he shaped into a hut every night. And finally, after he had fed the dogs and eaten again himself, after he had slipped down into the silky warmth of his furs, sleep. He loved to sleep, even though it was hard to sleep alone. Often he would have bad dreams and cry out in his sleep; often he would awake sweating to see the oilstone burnt low and its light nearly extinguished. He always welcomed morning. It was always very cold, but always the air was clear, and the eastern sky was full of light, and the blessed mountain, Kweitkel, was every day vanishingly smaller behind him.