The Shaman (41 page)

The
camels bawled and bolted. Ohaern rocked, almost thrown from his saddle, and
Lucoyo
was
thrown, but caught an arm about the camel’s neck as he fell,
and managed to scramble back on. Manalo’s camel fought and curvetted, braying
terror, but the sage held on and channeled its fear into flight, after Ohaern’s.

The
smith’s camel was running faster, though, and would have run itself into the
ground had not another maddened female face lifted itself out of the sand
straight before them. The camel bawled again and whirled about to run back—but
it saw strange leonine beasts with multiple jaws coming up in the distance, and
it stalled.

Manalo
caught up, snatched the reins, and turned the beast aside. Together they ran
from the monsters with Lucoyo’s beast right behind them—but a third snake-body
reared up with a beautiful face framed in wild, windblown hair above perfect
breasts, and Manalo’s camel leaped aside. It ran north until a fourth head
reared up, then turned back to the south, but a fifth snake-woman rose, and
hissing seemed to surround them, enwrap them, enfold them, as their camels ran
through an increasingly narrow corridor of snake-women, streaming in now from
all sides, until a great rock structure loomed up before them, ghostly in the
moonlight. The camels galloped between two huge uprights, and suddenly Ohaern
was filled with a sense of limitless power, of unimaginable strength. He knew
there was nothing he could not do, nothing within the realm of a man—even the
slaying of an Ulin. But as fast as he thought it came the realization: this was
the power of the stones, not of himself.

Manalo
pulled his beast back hard. The camels slowed to a halt, bawling, but the sage’s
chanting overrode the sound. Corruscations of blue light sprang up around all
the huge stone columns and across the lintels that bound them together, and the
air between each pair of columns shimmered with energy.

The
snake-women and the manticores reared back, shying away, filling the air all
about with hisses of rage and roars of disappointment.

Lucoyo
leaped off his camel and went running toward the monsters, drawing his sword
and shouting, “Away with you, foul creatures! I shall slay you, I shall slay
you all!”

“Lucoyo,
no!” Manalo cried. “Ohaern, stop him!”

Ohaern
tapped his camel, crooning, and the beast lumbered into motion again, swerving
around to block Lucoyo. The half-elf shouted in anger and veered around the
beast—but Ohaern jumped down on the far side and caught Lucoyo in a bear hug as
he came around. “No, archer! The power that keeps them out must keep you in!”

“I
can slay them all, slay anything born of Ulahane’s foul magic!” Lucoyo raved,
thrashing about. “Let me go, Ohaern! At last I can strike back at him who saw
me made!”

“No,
Lucoyo! The power that thrums within you is not your own, but that of the
stones about you! Give over, for once out of this ring, you will be only
yourself again!”

Lucoyo
stilled, then hung his head and said heavily, “So that is why I suddenly felt
that I could fell the Tree that upholds the sky! Oh, let me be, Ohaern! Nay, I
shall not seek to do more than I can!”

Ohaern
set him down and opened his arms warily, but the half-elf only sheathed his
sword, cast a disgusted look at the snake-women, then lifted his head with a
look of exaltation coming into his eyes. “I can enjoy that heady feeling,
though.”

“You
can indeed,” Manalo told him, “but the manticores and lamias cannot. They are
creatures made by Ulahane, and cannot enter here without great pain.”

“Is
that what the snake-women are?” Lucoyo asked. “Lamias?”

“That
is what they are called,” Manalo answered.

Ohaern
looked up with sudden understanding. “So to them, this ring
is
accursed!”

“Is
that where we are?” Lucoyo stared about him in sudden terror. “The accursed
ruin?”

“We
are,” Manalo said, “but as Ohaern has noticed, it is not accursed—to us. Nor is
it a ring, but a rectangle. It once was a fortress with a wooden roof, but the
boards have long since fallen in and turned to powder.”

Lucoyo
glanced apprehensively at the dust under his feet, but Ohaern’s eyes were on
the pillars. They were perfect cylinders, soaring so high that they seemed to
taper at the top, and the lintels linking them bore strange carvings that he
could not make out for the blue light that played all about them. “Why do men
think it accursed?”

“Because
Ulahane has put that rumor about through his human agents,” Manalo explained. “He
does not wish any human to come here, for fear they may find a way to use the
power of this ancient fortress to oppose him. So he has threatened to curse any
man who approaches, and has surrounded it with devastation to keep them away.”

“Why
is it abandoned?” Lucoyo asked. “Only for fear of the Scarlet One?”

“That
is reason enough, for most men,” Manalo told him. “This was the fortress of the
human-lovers in the Ulin War. The roof sheltered them from spears and bolts
that Marcoblin’s forces might rain down upon them. But at the last, Marcoblin
broke the roof and fell upon Lomallin and his allies with steel and fire—though
it was the human-haters who were burned and slain as often as the human-lovers,
for within these pillars and their walls of magic, there was no room for an
army to maneuver, so it quickly became Ulin against Ulin, in individual combat.”

“And
the Ulins were all equal in power,” Ohaern whispered.

“Even
so. When Marcoblin was slain, and Ulahane saw he could not win, he rallied his
forces—what few of them there were—and retreated. Lomallin and his few
surviving allies stayed, singing praises for their survival as they scrubbed
away the blood, and their goodness and gratitude made it a shrine. Their power
endured even after they left.”

“Did
not Ulahane seek to wreak vengeance upon the place of Marcoblin’s death when it
was no longer protected?”

“He
tried to destroy, he tried to desecrate, but found he could not,” Manalo
replied. “Equal numbers of lovers and haters died here, so hate was balanced by
charity, and the goodwill of the human-lovers for their stronghold turned that
balance. Ulahane can only turn it back by slaying an Ulin here, a human-lover.”

“Would
not he have to slay Lomallin himself to overcome so much goodness?” Ohaern
asked.

“Something
of that magnitude,” Manalo admitted.

“Is
that why we have come here, then?” Lucoyo asked, his voice small in the
vastness. “To witness the death of an Ulin?”

Manalo
stood still long minutes; then he nodded. “A combat to the death. Yes. And
there must be a human witness, and two will stand a greater chance of escaping
to tell all other humans about it.”

“Cannot
you bear word yourself?” Lucoyo asked.

“No,”
Manalo said shortly. “Never mind why. The time is appointed, and the hour
approaches. Go to hiding, you two.” He pointed to the side, where a column had
fallen with a lintel stone leaning across it. “Go there and he down; when you
kneel up in the shadow where the two stones touch, you shall be able to see.”

Lucoyo
objected, “But you must also—”

“Go!”
Manalo snapped, not looking at them. “Go hide, and when this night’s work is
done, go out secretly from this temple, and hide until you will be safe in
traveling! Dariad and his people will wait for you; they will not despair and
turn away no matter how long the vigil—and you must survive, because this whole
war hinges on Ohaern, and Ohaern’s life hinges on Lucoyo. Go!” His arm was an
iron rod pointing to the fallen stones, and his face was livid.

Never
before had they seen such tension in the sage. Lucoyo felt a perverse surge of
desire to defy, to bait, but he looked into Manalo’s face and forced that urge
back down. He fell in beside Ohaern and lay down between the stones.

Then
they waited. Now and again one of them would lever himself up to glance at
Manalo—but always they saw him standing as they had left him, still as the
stone columns about him and every bit as straight, his hands holding fast to
his staff.

Then,
when both had their heads down, a huge blast of sound rocked the ancient
temple, a blast followed by booming, harsh laughter that echoed off the stones.
Ohaern sat up, peering over the top of the fallen lintel, and Lucoyo edged his
way up beside him, then froze in fright, for he saw a giant, three times the
height of a man, with a face twisted with hatred, cavernous eyes, and a mouth
filled with pointed teeth that gleamed in the light from the stones as he
laughed, head back and high. He wore a kilt and armor, all scarlet, and the
helmet on his head was shaped like a skull.

Ohaern
and Lucoyo both knelt rigid. It was the Scarlet One, it was Ulahane himself!

“Now
the hour has come,” the Scarlet One boomed. “Now can you hide from me no
longer! Now comes the hour of confrontation, when you must fight me
hand-to-hand and self-to-self, with none of your puppets nor your puling allies
to save you!”

“Now
comes the hour indeed,” Manalo replied, “but who shall save
you!”

“I
need no saving, foolish green-sick one!” And Ulahane drew a knife from his belt
to send it flashing toward Manalo.

Ohaern
gasped, rigid, but Lucoyo clamped a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.

The
knife changed as it flew, turning to fire, becoming a bolt of ruby light, but
Manalo did not even raise his staff to ward it off. It struck him in the chest,
and Lucoyo gasped while Ohaern clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a cry of
anger. But the sage still stood, tall and straight, as his body absorbed the ruby
bolt and began to glow, first orange, then yellow, even as it began to swell.
His robe ripped and fell off, his staff was dwarfed as the hand about it grew.
Manalo’s form glowed with a nimbus of green light as he grew taller, wider, and
taller yet, until he stood, clad only in a loincloth, the staff now seeming a
mere wand in the hand of a giant. His face was still Manalo’s face, bearded,
wise, and gentle—but now Ohaern recognized the face he had seen on statues.

“He—”
Lucoyo cried, before Ohaern’s hand clapped over his mouth. He did not need to
complete the sentence, after all. Both of them could see: their friend, the
gentle sage, was in truth the Green One, Lomallin.

Ulahane
bellowed with rage and drew a sword that was half again the height of a man. He
advanced on Lomallin, and the ground shook with his tread as he swung that
terrible blade, blazing with red fire. Still calmly, Lomallin met its stroke
with his green-glowing wand—and incredibly, Ulahane’s sword jolted to a stop
against it. Ulahane bellowed again, swinging the sword up and about, and it
was
fire now, red as blood and smoking. Again Lomallin met burning sword
with green wand, and again the two clashed and jolted still. Ulahane howled and
kicked Lomallin in the groin, and the Green One cried out, falling back,
staggering, but kept his feet. His wand lowered, though, and with a cry of
triumph Ulahane swung his sword high in a circle and chopped down. It struck
Lomallin where his neck joined his shoulder and went on, sheared through muscle
and bone halfway down into his chest, and Lucoyo and Ohaern leaped to their
feet with cries of horror—but they went unheard, for Ulahane’s bellow of
victory shook all that stone square and filled the night as Lomallin’s body
convulsed, whipping upright, then bending back in an arc, so far that he seemed
almost a half circle. Green light streamed from his wound, green light that
filled the sky, crackling among the columns as the Ulin’s body disintegrated,
turning to dust, and the dust turned to glitter as it fell, glittering light
that dispersed and rose and blew away into the heavens, while the blue light
that had crackled along the columns and lintels dissipated and died with the
one who had made it.

The
manticores charged in with a roar from the south and west; the lamias arrowed
in, hissing, from the north and east.

“Find
them!” Ulahane roared. “Find these insolent mortals who dared accompany an Ulin
and call him friend!”

But
he had done too well in breeding monsters of malice. The manticores pounced
upon the lamias, and the lamias threw their coils about the manticores, and the
night was filled with hissing and roaring,

“Run!”
Lucoyo cried, and Ohaern jolted out of his paralysis of horror and turned,
running with every ounce of his strength, running to get away from that
horrible place where he had lost his strongest friend and seen a god die.

Behind
them, Ulahane waded into the melee, roaring and cursing and striking out,
knocking his two kinds of monstrosities apart. Finally, he sent them leaping
and gliding out into the night, and Ohaern heard their howling and hissing as
Lucoyo passed him, running for more than his life—for the half-elf had no
illusions as to what his fate would be if Ulahane caught him and there was no
Lomallin to shield him.

It
was a long night of hiding and running and hiding again. Several times, when
the monsters were near, Ohaern recited one or another of the spells he had
heard from Manalo—no, Lomallin! But Ohaern was not an Ulin, and the spell that
should have kept the monsters beyond the light of a campfire let them come
close, within five feet of the dry creek bed where the two men lay with fear in
their throats. Of course, Ohaern dared not stop long enough to light a fire,
dared not even show a light, and certainly did not have the powder the sage—and
Ulin!—had thrown into the flame. So perhaps the spell did work after all, for
the monsters never found them, though they came close enough to have caught
their scent easily.

Finally,
as the chill of the darkest hour reached through to their bones, they staggered
into the shelter of a huge boulder that rose abruptly from the sand, and
blundered into a cave hidden under its low-curving side. Ohaern dropped down
and leaned back against a cold stone wall, chest heaving, eyes closed, face
pale and drawn. Lucoyo was equally winded, but still tense with the energy of
fear, he looked about at their new refuge. It was low, not high enough for even
Lucoyo to stand upright, and cylindrical, running back into the boulder farther
than they could see, almost as if it had been the track of some giant worm that
burrowed through on its way to richer fare underground. Lucoyo eyed the depths
and decided to avoid them. In fact, he decided to be very wary about them,
period.