The Shaman Read online

  “Your scouts must be out and about,” Ohaern muttered.

  “Scouts, you must be scouring the countryside!” the king called. “All others, come to the central circle, to roast fat meats and pour out wine! We have earned our jubilation!”

  The crowd roared their approval, then began to move away to the fire pits in the great open space before the king’s palace.

  “Come.” The king led Lucoyo and Ohaern through the great portals and into his hall. “While the cooks make ready the festival, let us have wine—and rest!”

  They came into a large room with heaps of cushions. The king called, “Ho! Bring wine!” Then he sat down and leaned back against the softness of fine cloth over down as women appeared, bearing wine and platters of fruits. Ohaern stared for a moment, unable to conceal his surprise. The women he had seen in Cashalo all these past two weeks had been clothed decently, if lightly, but these handmaidens of the king were in cloth so fine that he could see through it, though not clearly, and wore only skirts and bodices, with their midriffs left bare. Moreover, each was a beauty, very obviously selected for grace and form.

  “They are lovely, are they not?”

  The king’s words brought Ohaern out of his reverie with a start. He tore his gaze away—and saw Lucoyo, his eyes so wide they nearly bulged, staring at the women and hissing, “Yessss—O King! They are comely indeed!”

  “This office has heavy burdens,” the king told him, “but it has its pleasures, too. You see now why I thought it best to fight—these butterflies are worth defending.”

  He said it in a joking tone, but Ohaern caught the seriousness beneath it and knew that this king would have defended any woman, young or old, pretty or ugly. “Your people are, indeed, worth defending,” he said. “Therefore I think it unwise that you put the captive Vanyar in your cellar with the priests and worshipers of Ulahane.”

  “Why? Think you they will brew mischief together?”

  “I do not doubt it for a moment.”

  “Nor do I,” said the king, “but I also think they will find ways to come together and brew mischief even if we let them free—so it is better to have them where we can watch them all and have spies among them, while we may.”

  Ohaern stared; the king was more subtle than he had realized, “ ‘While you may?’ But what could prevent you?”

  “Peace,” the king sighed, “and the worshipers of Ulahane whom we had no reason to imprison. When we are sure the threat is past and the Vanyar have passed on, I shall have to let them go free again.”

  “What?’ Lucoyo tore his gaze from the nearest handmaiden and fastened it on the king. “Wherefore? You are the king! Is not your word law?”

  “No,” the king replied. “There is the ancient law of the fishermen, handed down from parent to child since time began—and we have added to it the laws of the foreigners with whom we trade, if those laws are simple and blend well with our own. If I flout those laws in my judgments or commands, the people will be discontent—and if I do it too many times, they will pull me down and choose a new king in my place.”

  “So,” Ohaern breathed, “you are not so different from a tribal chieftain, after all.”

  “Only in state, and the number of people I lead,” said the king, “but I cannot force them all. Indeed, I can only guide the force that comes from all, against those who break our laws.”

  “But there are ways of gaining power over all the people!” Lucoyo leaned forward, frowning. “You have guardsmen, and surely there are many of your fishermen who would be glad to join their ranks, now that they have learned something of fighting! Pay enough of them, and you could force all your people to your will!”

  Ohaern stared at the half-elf in horror. Had Lucoyo always been like this, and he had never seen it?

  “No doubt I could,” the king agreed, “and do not think I have not toyed with the notion. But I wish to lead, not to rule—to judge, not to force people to obey my whims. That is not my way, not what I think should be the way of men who know the customs and history of their people, as all folk should. No, I think we may leave your tyranny to the Vanyar.”

  “So.” Lucoyo’s eyes gleamed as he leaned back among the cushions. “Yes, I think we may—to them, and to the nomads, who raised me and cast me out.”

  Ohaern sighed with relief. Lucoyo had only been testing the king.

  Hadn’t he?

  If he had, he might as well have tested the whole people— but the new Vanyar slaves were doing that, and quite well, it seemed.

  In the next few weeks, as Ohaern walked among the people, he saw young men gather around the Vanyar whenever they had a few minutes’ rest between tasks. “What is it like to ride in a chariot?” they would ask. “How do you fight with a sword?” And the Vanyar were glad to tell them, expanding visibly, basking in the admiration.

  “This battle seems to have kindled a taste for warfare in the young,” Lucoyo told Ohaern, frowning.

  “Yes, and I could wish for better ways to satisfy that taste than to ask the Vanyar,” Ohaern answered. “We must begin a school for swordplay, Lucoyo.”

  But even that did little good; the Vanyar slaves seemed to find ways to be given chores that brought them to overlook the central circle when Ohaern and Lucoyo were teaching. After-times, Ohaern would overhear them telling the young men what Ohaern was teaching them correctly—and the many more things that he was teaching them incorrectly.

  Actually, there was little enough doubt as to how the Vanyar were being assigned to the circle at practice times—the king, receiving word from his scouts that the Vanyar horde had driven on to the east, bypassing Cashalo in favor of easier prey, had released the priests of Ulahane and their most ardent worshipers. When he sold the Vanyar slaves, many of them were bought by those selfsame priests, and the rest were bought by the ardent worshipers.

  “They conspire against you,” Ohaern warned the king.

  “Surely my spies will bring word of it,” the king replied.

  Ohaern was worried that the king seemed so complacent—and worried more when one of those spies was found in a waterfront gutter one morning with his throat slit. But the king was more concerned that so anonymous a murder could be done in his city than he was about the identity of the victim. He recruited more guardsmen and doubled the watch about the docks—and did not seem to notice that the new recruits were all from the young men who had so ardently listened to the Vanyar slaves.

  Then Ohaern chanced to come into the king’s hall and find him surrounded by his handmaidens—but with the Vanyar captain firing the brazier, for the nights had become chill. “But why should the builders fill the places where the ebony and marble have been taken out of the wall?” the Vanyar was saying. “Your people fared well enough without such a bulwark for all ages past, and surely your young men have learned enough of fighting to be a wall in their own right.”

  “Do not believe it!” Ohaern cried. “Yes, O King, your young men have been diligent in practice at swordplay—but they can not yet stand against men who have studied war from their cradles!”

  The Vanyar captain turned a venomous gaze on Ohaern. The smith returned it with a look that should have frozen the man and shivered him to pieces, and for a moment the women drew back, frightened by the unspoken menace in the air.

  The king disrupted it quickly. “I will not forbid a man to speak, Ohaern, even if he is a slave.”

  “Laudable,” Ohaern grunted, “and I forget that you have the sense to know when not to listen.”

  “Indeed I do,” the king returned, “but I know also when to hearken, and I have learned that grains of wisdom may be hidden even in the prattling of a child. Are you so wedded to your wall, Ohaern?”

  “So long as there are Vanyar roaming the valleys in their chariots, and people in Cashalo to tell them when the roadways are clear? No, O King, I am not wedded to the wall—but Cashalo should be wedded to its freedom, and the wall is the ring that is the sign of that marriage!”

 
; “Do you accuse me of treachery?” The Vanyar rose, every muscle taut.

  “No,” said Ohaern, “I accuse you of loyalty—to your own tribe!” He turned to the king. “He profits nothing by giving you good advice, but regains his freedom and his rank by counseling you falsely!”

  The Vanyar captain took a step closer, his eye glinting, his lips parting in a snarl. Ohaern’s face froze and he stepped toward the Vanyar, drawing his sword.

  “No!” the king cried, but Ohaern only reversed the sword and held it out to the Vanyar. The captive snatched it with a cry of delight—and Ohaern drew his long knife.

  “Now I say no!” the king thundered, and both men hesitated. “Give back the sword!” he commanded, on his feet and moving toward them both. The Vanyar glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, then reluctantly reversed the sword and handed it back to Ohaern. The smith snatched it, sheathed both sword and knife, and turned away, simmering.

  The wall began to come down, and the lumber of which it had been built returned to the warehouses. Ohaern watched it go with misgiving, but the merchants to whom the materials belonged seemed relieved and quite satisfied.

  “Is it not ironic,” asked Lucoyo, “that the slaves who tear down the wall are Vanyar?”

  “I see no irony at all,” said Ohaern, “only a threat.”

  The irony came when he heard one of the Vanyar slaves telling some youths, “Oh, you people of Cashalo have been noble and generous, to be sure! But you have left us, your captives, able to rise up and strike against you.”

  “Not that we would, of course,” said another Vanyar slave, and the first nodded. “Now, we Vanyar would have cut a captive’s hamstrings, so that he might not stand against us—and gelded him, so that we could be sure that any children born could only be our own!”

  “Besides,” said the second, “it makes a captive more docile, more ready to obey, less likely to rebel.”

  The young men listened, eyes wide, nodding, hanging on the warriors’ every word. “Do you say we should treat you thus?” one asked.

  “Oh, nay!” the Vanyar said quickly, and his partner chuckled. “We are glad indeed that you are so merciful! But we did expect, at the least, some curses and kicks, to remind us who was slave and who master.”

  “How would you have treated women you captured?” asked another young man.

  “Why, what are women for, youngling?” the slave returned, and his friend gave a lascivious chuckle and answered, “They are for any man—who can pay the price!”

  “Would you sell them for bed-slaves, then?” The young men seemed horrified, but held by morbid fascination.

  “Aye, if the price were high enough,” the slave said, “though since every Vanyar has two or three such, none would buy, unless the woman were amazingly beautiful.”

  “Which are few, once enslaved,” his friend said judiciously. “It is for that reason that the beauties are treated more kindly— but we get our money from letting a man spend an hour with the woman for a fee. Strangers, of course, though even some of our own nation find the notion appealing enough.”

  “A man who owns a beautiful slave can become rich indeed,” the other said, and Ohaern turned away, sickened. He knew he should have beaten the Vanyar for speaking thus, no matter what questions they were asked; he knew he should have rebuked the youths for asking—but he also knew it would have done little or no good, no, not even if the king himself had done the rebuking.

  Instead he went to the Street of the Lantern Houses and hauled Lucoyo out of the wallow of delights that were now his for the asking. The half-elf squalled protest, but Ohaern dragged him out onto the street, Lucoyo in one hand and his bow and quiver in the other, scarcely giving the half-elf time to finish pulling on his trews. “You have reveled long enough, archer! We must be on our way!”

  “On the road again?” Lucoyo bleated in dismay. “Go by yourself, Biri! I like it here!”

  “Will you like it when the Vanyar come galloping down this street in their chariots, slaying all they see?”

  Lucoyo froze in the act of belting his tunic. “So. You have seen that, too, have you?”

  “If you have, why have you stayed so long?” Ohaern looked up at the cries of protest and saw the half-naked women denouncing him—but one began to beckon, and several others laughed and joined her. “No, I see why. Well, I must be your will, Lucoyo.”

  “My will not, rather,” the half-elf muttered, cinching his belt. “But how if the Vanyar do not come back?”

  “How if the winter does not come back?” Ohaern grunted. “Though the Vanyar have no need to—the men they have left as slaves will do it for them! This city may yet be delivered up to Ulahane, archer, with or without the Vanyar—through no weapon sharper than foul advice and depraved teaching!”

  “No weapon sharper, indeed.” But Lucoyo cast a guilty glance back at the caroling women. An oafish grin creased his face for a minute, and he lifted a hand to wave.

  “Then, too,” Ohaern mused, “there is the question of what fate awaits the man who has offended Ulahane personally, in a city that Ulahane’s minions have taken.”

  Lucoyo’s hand stilled in midair, then began to wave goodbye. He turned resolutely away. “Pleasant as they are, no woman should be constrained to such a life—especially since I have seen what use they are put to when they have lost their beauty. Although I had begun to realize that I could become rich by—” He slapped his own face. “No, you have the right of it, hunter. We cannot save this town by staying.” He looked up at Ohaern with haunted eyes. “Perhaps we cannot save it at all.”

  “Perhaps not,” Ohaern said grimly, “but it shall not be for lack of trying! We must go, Lucoyo—to find the source of the evil that seeps into this place through its very stones!”

  “Yes,” Lucoyo said glumly, “we must go.”

  The king was distressed to find them determined to leave and asked what he could do to induce them to stay—but when Ohaern told him it was nothing less than cleansing the city of all who worshiped Ulahane, the king became sad, for his ancient law would not permit such a thing without proof of cause. He decided, therefore, to give Lucoyo and Ohaern a farewell befitting a hero, even a king—but Ohaern, realizing that would be as good as painting them green for all the minions of the scarlet god to see, refused, claiming the simple life to which he had been reared forbade such vanity, and he bade the king farewell with heartfelt wishes for good fortune— wishes which he sadly feared would do no good at all. Instead, he and Lucoyo slipped out of the city in Riri’s canoe—the fisherman was glad to make them a gift of it—and drifted past the borders of Cashalo in the last rays of the setting sun.

  As darkness drew in, they beached the canoe on a spit of sand—but before they could step out to draw the craft up, big hands at the ends of long arms laid hold of the bows, and a small gnarled figure drew the craft high on the bank. “It is good to see you safe!” cried the dwerg. “I feared that sinkhole had swallowed you up!”

  Lucoyo overcame his surprise. “It nearly did,” he said, and climbed out of the boat. “It is good to see you again, my friend.” He stretched, looking about him. “Suddenly I feel clean of a soil I had not known I had accumulated, O Smith!”

  “I feel it, too.” Ohaern threw his head back and drew in a deep breath of the cool air of evening, then exhaled sharply and said, “I shall build the fire.”

  “No, I shall!” Lucoyo said quickly. “There is dross in me that needs to burn away.”

  “Neither of you shall,” the dwerg chuckled, “for I already have. Come! There is only one hare roasting for my dinner, but I can quickly find two more.”

  So they spent the evening beginning to live again as hunter and nomad should live—in the open by a campfire, with talk of simple things, but with a being for whom simplicity was always underlaid by complexity. By bedtime they had finally learned the dwerg’s name—Grakhinox—and his rank, which was only that of smith—which was to say, an ordinary dwerg, a very ordinary person,
for he came of a people who were all smiths. And he was young, for his kind—scarcely more than an apprentice, only a hundred fifty years old.

  As they paddled away into the morning mists, Lucoyo mused, “It would seem that Ulahane is as much at work among the city folk as he is among the barbarians.”

  “Or as much at work among the barbarians as in the city,” Ohaern rejoined. “Do not forget that his stronghold is Kuru.”

  “A telling point.” Lucoyo grinned. “What will happen, I wonder, when Ulahane’s city of Kuru is beset by Ulahane’s barbarian Vanyar?”

  “Whatever occurs,” Ohaern returned, “you may be sure that the Scarlet One will delight in every second of the carnage.”

  “True, true.” Lucoyo nodded. “After all, no matter who loses that fight, he wins.”

  Chapter 21

  “Is there no end to these plowed fields?” Lucoyo stared at the endless rows of green shoots. The companions had been watching them drift by ever since they had left Cashalo. They would have wondered who farmed them if they had not passed two villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, or seen the occasional farmer out in a field, bent over a hoe. But as the day aged toward evening, they began to see the farmers trooping home, their mattocks over their shoulders. The men were closer to the shore now, and looked up as they saw the travelers pass—looked up, and grinned, and waved. Lucoyo waved back, albeit somewhat hesitantly—he wasn’t sure it was the wise thing to do.

  “Always return goodwill, Lucoyo.” Ohaern waved back at the people on shore with a broad if somewhat insincere smile. As they drifted farther, a village came into sight, with a sloping ramp of earth going down into the water. The farmers waved, then beckoned to them.

  Ohaern’s smile gelled, and he asked Grakhinox, “You have roamed the countryside while you waited for us, have you not?”

  “Aye,” said Grakhinox.

  “Do you know anything of these people?”

  Grakhinox shrugged. “If they are like the folk who live hard by Cashalo, they trade with the city. Those folk fled when the Vanyar came near—those who could. Many were caught.”