The Shaman Read online

  Of course, you did not need to stand up to paddle a canoe— and that was probably the greatest reason why the Vanyar had kept a few of the rivermen alive. They could not paddle as quickly as they had before the conquest, however, for they were all gaunt, from short rations, and stretched to their limits by the exertions of the day.

  “They made us watch what they did to our wives and children,” the man protested.

  Ohaern shuddered at the thought, but said doggedly, “It is more important to eliminate the source of their power first. When we have done that, we will go back and see to the Vanyar themselves.”

  “What source is that?” the dwerg asked in his grating voice. He was scarcely four feet tall, perhaps not even that, and his hands hung down to his ankles—but his shoulders and arms were hugely muscled, and his short, bandy legs were like the trunks of small trees. The muscles of his chest and back strained against the leather straps that held the kilt that was his only clothing. It was stained and spotted with the holes of cinders, for the dwergs had been smiths for longer than men had known iron. Their works of bronze were said to be miracles of loveliness, their weapons miracles of death, and there was nothing they could not make. But human folk almost never saw them, for they labored in their hidden homes inside mountains and rarely came out into the light of day.

  “How is it you were captured?” Ohaern asked in return.

  “We cannot find all the materials we need inside our hills,” the dwerg answered. “Now and again we must venture out, to mine the rare earths that lie on the surface, or to trade for things such as saltpeter and the sulfur that gathers near steaming springs. It was my misfortune that a group of Vanyar chanced near my band. The other three they slew with their arrows, but I lived, and they kept me for their amusement. Then an elder of a tribe they had conquered, hoping to win leniency for his people, told them I was a smith of wonders, and they set me to forging for them. But when they discovered that I knew the craft of boats, they set me to paddling, for I am strong.”

  “Let me do to the Vanyar what they did to me!” the riverman pleaded.

  The bound Vanyar squalled in rage and thrashed at his bonds.

  “If you will not allow that, and you will not slay them all, then let me at least slay this one!” the riverman pleaded, raising his axe.

  But Ohaern shook his head. “We need the knowledge in his head, but we will not find it by breaking open his skull.” His gaze strayed to the Vanyar. “Though perhaps I should let this riverman have his way with you, if you will not tell me what I wish to know.”

  The Vanyar went still and his eyes turned to ice. He stared back at Ohaern with contempt and a mute challenge.

  “He is stubborn-hard,” the chief said in disgust, turning back to the riverman. “If he would not answer when you and your friends had your exercise with him before, he will not talk no matter how much pain we give him.”

  “It is their pride.” The riverman turned and spat on the Vanyar, whose eyes blazed at him with cold fury that told how he would treat the riverman if their positions were reversed. “He will die in pain rather than speak. They fancy they will go to a palace that Ulahane keeps for heroes, if they find valiant deaths.”

  “It is a he,” Ohaern replied. “Ulahane has no use for the dead, save those few souls that he keeps as slaves to his magic.”

  The Vanyar gargled something in a contemptuous tone.

  “Oh, believe me, I know!” Ohaern rose and went to the man, and Lucoyo would never have guessed, from his tone and face, that he was lying. He stared; this was an Ohaern he did not know. “I have learned something of the scarlet lord.” Ohaern yanked the gag from the man’s mouth. “Let me show you what I have learned of his worship!” He bent low, and all Lucoyo saw was that he squeezed the man’s leg—but the Vanyar let out a piercing shriek, and kept shrieking.

  “Tell me what your people want with the cities, and I will stop the pain,” Ohaern said.

  The Vanyar clamped his mouth shut against the scream. It still gurgled in his throat, but he would not let it out.

  “That will not move you? Then perhaps this ...” Ohaern seized him near his neck, and the man brayed with pain—but the bray formed into a single word, repeated again and again: “No! No! No!”

  Ohaern left off and glared down at the man. Then he came back to the fire. “It is as I said—he will not speak. We could waste three days in the attempt, and I have not so much time.”

  “I have,” the riverman said, his eyes smoldering. “The rest of my life is waste! Let me have some purpose in it!”

  “We shall find you purpose enough,” Ohaern promised.

  “You and your friends shall come south with us, for we shall be all the stronger for a second boat, with three armed men.”

  “Where did you learn that torture?” Lucoyo whispered.

  “The techniques of healing can be used for pain.” Ohaern turned to him. “As to the will for it, I had only to remember my village and my people after the Klaja found them, then imagine what the Vanyar did to this village of fishers. But for now let us seek a swifter and more certain way of unsealing this man’s lips.” He took his pack and began to rummage within it. He took out a small pottery jar and a bark kettle, filled the kettle with water, and set it over the fire. As it heated, he chanted softly in an unintelligible language, adding pinches of powder from the jar.

  The riverman stared, then sidled over to Lucoyo. “What does he do?”

  Lucoyo wasn’t at all sure himself, but he thought it best to put a good face on it. He shrugged and said, “He knows some magic; he is a smith.”

  “So am I,” said the dwerg, “but I have never learned magic of this kind.”

  “Our teacher taught him some healing, too.” But Lucoyo doubted that this magic would make the Vanyar any more whole.

  Ohaern put the jar away and began to chant more loudly, watching the kettle boil. Lucoyo suspected that his friend did not know the meanings of the words he said, for he recognized their sounds. “He recites a spell our teacher taught him.”

  The dwerg nodded, reassured. “He does; I comprehend the words—though I have never learned this chant.”

  Ohaern went to yank a hair from the Vanyar’s head—the man grunted with surprise—then brought it back to the fire, cast it into the kettle, and followed it with another pinch of powder as he shouted a last phrase. Finally, he took the kettle from the fire and brought it to the Vanyar. For a moment he stood, looking down with narrowed eyes at the invader, whose eyes showed white all around the iris now.

  Then Ohaern dropped to one knee beside him, hauled his head up by the hair and held the kettle under his nose. The Vanyar tried to turn his head away, ignoring the pain in his hair, but Ohaern held him too closely. The captive tried to wrench his head away, but the kettle followed, staying under his nose, and Ohaern laughed. “Why do you seek to avoid it? The scent is pleasant enough!” Then he sang softly in the foreign tongue as he watched the steam waft up into the Vanyar’s nostrils, filling the invader’s head until the fumes thinned and disappeared as the brew cooled. Then Ohaern handed the kettle to Lucoyo and jabbed the Vanyar in the belly, just below the breastbone. The invader’s eyes bulged and his mouth gaped— and Ohaern snatched the bucket, yanked the captive’s head back, and poured the brew in over his tongue. The Vanyar instantly clamped his jaw shut, though his eyes still bulged with pain, but reflex made him swallow. He set his jaw, even though he still struggled for breath, but Ohaern only poured the rest of the brew onto the earth, nodding with satisfaction. He whistled between his teeth until the Vanyar inhaled again with a long, loud gasp, then demanded, “Why did your people take the village of the rivermen?”

  “Because the traders—” The Vanyar clamped his mouth shut, wild-eyed, shocked at himself—but the words still struggled for escape inside his mouth.

  “It is none of your doing, but that of the brew,” Ohaern informed him. “Its fumes have settled in your brain, and will ensure that you speak only truth. Te
ll me, then—why did you take the fishing village?”

  Still the words struggled, but the Vanyar held his jaw tight against them. Ohaern threw him down in disgust and did not bother replacing the gag. “Now he will not answer at all!”

  “So much the better; the sound of his voice would sicken us,” Lucoyo replied.

  “But we must have what he knows!” In a rage, Ohaern turned, dropping to one knee again as his huge fist rose high for a buffet that would surely break the Vanyar’s knee ...

  Or would have, if Lucoyo had not caught that fist and held it back. “No, no, softly, blacksmith, softly! He is not iron, nor is there an anvil beneath him, that you should seek to beat him into a shape more to your liking. After all, what does he know? He is only an ignorant cart rider, and surely holds nothing of any importance in his ugly head!”

  The Vanyar’s eyes flared with anger at the insult.

  Ohaern glared up at Lucoyo, but withheld his blow.

  “Do you know why he has not spoken?” Lucoyo said. “He is ashamed of the sound of his voice, afraid that we will learn that he knows no answers at all!” He gestured at the bound man. “His people are so bestial that they scarcely have gods! Why, he could not even tell you the totem of his clan!”

  “The viper!” the Vanyar snapped. “I am of the Viper Clan!

  And beware, soft woodsmen, or my fangs shall pierce your flesh!”

  Lucoyo laughed in savage mockery. “Fangs, is it? Your fangs are drawn, viper, though I could believe there is poison in you. What else could there be, to make you slay so many good and innocent folk?”

  “Trade!” the Vanyar cried. “Trade, the word you stupid westerners use for your custom that lets us steal your beads and pots for bits of worthless yellow stone! The traders’ boats come up and down the river three and four times in a moon, and already the Vanyar grow rich from their exchange! These stupid fish catchers only gave them the river’s harvest, taking cloth and iron spearheads in return—and what did they use those spearheads for? Catching more fish!”

  Ohaern stared, but had the sense to keep his mouth shut and leave the questions to Lucoyo.

  “Stupid, is it?” the half-elf sneered. “Not so stupid as a cart rider who takes a clay pot for a piece of amber that is worth a thousand pots in Cashalo or Kuru! But godless men would not know that.”

  “The Vanyar are not godless!” the invader shouted. “And well you know it! We worship the great god Ulahane! The great god who will make yours cower in the dust!”

  “Cower, forsooth! How can you say that, when you know not who our gods are?”

  The Vanyar grinned. “I have heard you speak of Lomallin. Stupid, am I?”

  “Most stupid indeed, to think that speaking of a god means you worship him! Stupid even more to worship Ulahane, who will gobble you up into his foul maw when you die, and swallow you down to the fire pit of his belly! Why would you worship such a god, if you were not stupid?”

  “Because Ulahane has promised us wealth beyond our wildest dreams, fool! And surely he keeps his promise, for we have already gained wealth, great wealth—your wealth, that of all you effete westerners!”

  “So you are nothing but bandits?” Lucoyo sneered. “The only way you can gain wealth is by stealing it? Why, you are no better than river pirates—petty land-robbers, all of you!”

  “Great land-robbers!” The Vanyar’s face swelled red with anger. “We steal land by the mile! Land enough for all the Vanyar, and all our descendants! This Ulahane has promised us, if we will worship him and, in sign of that, give blood— much blood, oceans of it—piling high the soft corpses of slain villagers, and giving him the best of the people we conquer, in living sacrifice!”

  “Living?” Lucoyo braced himself not to shudder or show his horror. “You mean you kill them by slow torture!”

  “Even so! Even thus would Ulahane be worshiped!”

  There was some sudden lurch of motion behind Lucoyo, but he stayed Ohaern with a hand. “With tortured villagers, yes— but not the tender city folk, for ignorant cow-catchers like the Vanyar would not dare to assault the great cities!”

  “How little you know!” the Vanyar sneered. “Aye, we dare! Even now our cousins mass to attack Cashalo!”

  “Ridiculous,” Lucoyo scoffed. “What use have you cart drivers for great buildings?”

  “None.” The Vanyar grinned like a jackal indeed. “But we have great use for their wealth—oh, yes. And when that is taken, we shall tear down their obscene masses of hardened clay, we shall camp on the high ground to watch the spring floods wash it away, and we shall stay till the waters dry up, that we may see there is nothing left of these boastful city dwellers!”

  “You will conquer it only to destroy it! How wasteful! How like an ignorant cow-catcher!”

  The Vanyar’s face darkened with anger again. “We shall lay them waste indeed! The Vanyar have no use for cities! We shall cleanse the earth of them, we shall tumble them and grind them down—for these stupid city dwellers may think their warrens are only places for trading and for pleasure, but the Vanyar know the truth! They are strongholds, every one of those cities, guarding all traffic on a river or even two or three! They would pen the Vanyar in, imprison us in a ring of clay, prevent our coursing up the waters with our captured fish-eaters—” He paused to spit at the riverman. “But they shall not hold us back! The Vanyar will take them and destroy them, root and branch, stone and clay, every one!”

  “These are no villages you speak of,” Lucoyo said, as if he spoke to a five-year old, “but great masses of houses and temples! It is not so easy to take a city as a village!”

  “It is every bit as easy, for your foolish villagers have not learned to build walls—nor have your cities, we hear! None but Kuru! And they have great, broad, hard pathways, our spies tell us! Oh, yes, we have spies—did you think we would charge a city, knowing nothing about it? We shall speed our chariots down Cashalo’s great broad streets, striking down every living being; we shall send our warriors running in among their warren of huts, slaying all the men before they know what has struck them! Oh, be sure, the Vanyar shall chew up your cities and leave not even enough to spit out!”

  “Except yourselves.” Finally, Lucoyo let the loathing show in his voice and face as he turned to Ohaern. “Have you heard enough? Or is there more you would know?”

  “Nothing,” Ohaern said with full contempt. “He has said it all.”

  The Vanyar stared, then howled with rage, thrashing against his bonds. “You have tricked me! You have made me say what your magician wanted to know! A curse upon you! A curse!”

  “A curse indeed—you are a curse upon the land.” Lucoyo turned away to the fire. “What shall we do with him now?”

  Ohaern turned with him. “I care not. What use is he to us or to the world? Let him shrivel and die! Let the jackals he esteems take him and chew his entrails!”

  The riverman took the hint. His eyes gleamed as he took up the mended Vanyar axe and crawled back to its owner. Ohaern and Lucoyo hunched their shoulders, trying to ignore the shouts of anger, then the sudden terror-filled screams that were so abruptly cut off.

  “Revenge, or justice?” Ohaern muttered.

  “I care not,” Lucoyo said with sudden ferocity. “So long as the latter was served, what matter the former?”

  “What matter indeed?” Ohaern muttered, then looked up at Lucoyo keenly. “I would have tortured him harshly if you had not stopped me. You knew that, did you not?”

  “I had some inkling,” Lucoyo admitted.

  “It was well done, for he would not have spoken no matter how much pain I gave him; it was well done, for your trickery drew from him all the knowledge that torture would not have.”

  Lucoyo nodded. “I have some experience of the game.”

  “A game well played,” Ohaern said, “but why did you stop me? Mind you, it was the right thing to do, but I would not have expected it from you.”

  The trickster shrugged. “As you said, tor
ture would have been useless with that stubborn Vanyar anyway, and would have served only to vent your rage. Besides, as you heard from him, torture is imitation of Ulahane, doing to one another what the Scarlet One will do to all humankind if he gains the chance. If you begin to use Ulahane’s methods, you will put yourself into Ulahane’s power—and I have very personal reasons for wishing to avoid that.”

  They departed in the false dawn, leaving the remains of the Vanyar for the jackals, even as they had said. Ohaern told the dwerg to return to his mountains, that he was free—but the wondersmith, loyal to those who had freed him, followed on the shore and would not be turned away. Finally, concerned for his safety, Ohaern bade the fishermen take him into the canoe. They went more speedily after that, and Ohaern had to check them, or they would have left his coracle far behind.

  Thus they traveled south on the broad river. There were a few more challenges from the shore, but none of any consequence—and, two weeks later, as the sun was sliding down the sky toward evening, they saw a smudge upon the horizon, like a very low-lying cloud.

  Ohaern shipped his paddle and beckoned the canoe closer. As the rivermen grappled his gunwale, he asked, “What is that stain upon the sky?”

  “The smoke of many, many cooking fires,” they answered— and that was their first sight of Cashalo.

  Chapter 16

  They camped for the night, then rose before the sun and came into Cashalo with the dawn. The first thing that struck Ohaern was that there was no wall around the city. He had thought the Vanyar mad when he talked of the possibility of building a wall around a city, though after seeing the palisade around Byleo, Ohaern had understood his captive’s meaning— but it seemed incredible that people might surround a whole city with a wall! At least, if cities were as large as rumor said.

  It seemed that they were, to judge by Cashalo.

  Lucoyo wasn’t thinking—he simply stared in amazement. The mist rising from the river obscured the city, making it seem a faery realm, half real and half dream—and Lucoyo could well believe it a dream, for he had never seen so many huts; and even though there seemed to be a great deal of room between the stone and timber structures, he felt hemmed in already. Some of the buildings were huge, ten times the size of one of his people’s dwellings, tapering step by step as they ascended toward heaven. Had the people of Cashalo built homes for their gods?