The Shaman (24 page)

“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. Tell 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, torture 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.