Free Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert Page A

him and left
him clean.
    What had it done to the boy?
    The blue-gray panting of the rockslide, the
dust cloud rising like steam, had set the wilderness in motion, had
given it a new voice which Katsuk could understand.
    Tamanawis , the being of his spirit
power, had been reborn.
    Katsuk rubbed the place on his hand where
Bee had marked him. His flesh had absorbed that message and much
more: a power that would not be stopped. Let the searchers send
their most sophisticated machines against him. He was the Bee of
his people, driven by forces no hoquat machine could conquer. All
that lived wild around him helped and guarded him. The new voice of
the wilderness spoke to him through every creature, every leaf and
rock.
    Now, he could remember Janiktaht with
clarity.
    Until this moment, Janiktaht had been a
dream-sister: disheveled, drowned, eyes like torches among
treacherous images. She had been a tear-clouded mystery, her
perfume the rotting sea strand, her soul walled in by loneliness, a
graceless memory, accusing, united with every witch enchantment of
the night.
    Now his fears lay buried in the rockslide.
He knew the eyes of Charles Hobuhet had sent reality: Janiktaht
dead, sodden and bloated on a beach, her hair tangled with seaweed,
one with a welter of lost flotsam.
    As though to put the seal on his revelation,
the last of the raven flock returned from pursuit of the
helicopter. They settled into the trees above Katsuk. Even when he
emerged boldly from the spruce shadows and climbed to the cave
where Hoquat lay captive, the ravens remained, talking back and
forth.
    ***
    Fragment of a note left at the Sam’s River
shelter:
    Your words perpetuate illusion. You clot my
mind with foreign beliefs. My people taught that Man is dependent
upon the goodwill of all other animals. You forbade the ritual
which taught this. You said we would be punished for such thoughts.
I ask you who is being punished now?
    ***
    As they picked their way down the remnants
of the rockslide and walked openly into the forest, David told
himself the helicopter was sure to return. The men in it had seen
his handkerchief. Katsuk as much as admitted that. What did all his
insane talk about ravens have to do with anything real? The men had
seen the handkerchief; they would return.
    David looked over his shoulder at the cliff,
saw a thin cloud above it clinging like a piece of lint to the
clear-blown sky.
    The helicopter would return. People would
come on foot.
    David strained to hear the sound of
rotors.
    ***
    Katsuk had led him into solid shadows under
trees, and David prayed now that the aircraft would come only when
they were in a clearing or on a trail not shielded by trees.
    Crazy Indian!
    Katsuk felt the pressure of the boy’s
thoughts, but he knew the two figures in this forest gloom were not
people. No people passed this way. They were primal elements who
snagged their essence upon bits of time like animal fur caught on
thorns. His own thoughts went as wind through grass, moving this
world only after they had passed. And when they had passed,
everything behind them resolved itself into silence,
almost-but-not-quite the way it had been before their
intrusion.
    Yet—something changed. They changed
something essential that could be felt on the farthest star. Once
Katsuk stopped, faced the boy, and said:
    “Therefore the flight shall perish from the
swift, and the strong shall not strengthen his force, neither shall
the mighty deliver himself.” That’s what it says in your hoquat
book. It says “he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee
away naked in the day.” You hoquat had some wise men once, but you
never listened.”
    Another time, they rested and drank at a
spring that bubbled from a ledge. A green river roared in its chasm
below them. High clouds rippled the sky and there were hill shadows
on gray rocks across the river.
    Katsuk pointed down to the river.
“Look.”
    David whirled, stared down, and in the quick
rhythm of light