The Sage (40 page)

Lua
frowned. “You are bitter tonight, my shaman.”

“It
is my way of showing grief,” Yocote replied, “so I will ask your pardons right
now if my remarks become so tart and sharp as to be offensive. I will strive
most earnestly to prevent that, but strong feelings must show in some way.”

“You
are pardoned indeed,” Kitishane said softly. “Believe me, I feel the grief,
too.”

“And
I,” Lua murmured.

“I
am sure that you do,” Yocote said, “but I also suspect that something within
you is stifling the worst of the feeling, for it realizes that you cannot give
way so long as Culaehra is so numb.”

Kitishane
gazed at him, then looked down at the fire. “Perhaps.”

Yocote
nodded. “When the darkness that surrounds him dissipates, it will be your turn
to be prostrate with grief.”

“I
do not doubt you,” Kitishane said slowly, “but I wonder if Illbane meant as
much to me as he did to Culaehra.”

“Well
might you wonder, for Culaehra certainly did not know it until the old man
died.”

“There
is some truth to that,” Kitishane admitted, “but I am a woman, so I was
protected against trying to be like Illbane, to some extent. Culaehra was not.”

“A
deep and proper insight,” Yocote said. “He was your protector and your teacher,
yes, but he taught you only to fight and to forgive. He taught me also how to
be a man as well as to be a shaman; he taught me how to be my true self, but I
began by trying to be him.”

“So
you know that now.” Lua looked up at him keenly.

“Now,
yes,” Yocote agreed, “though I did not see it until he had begun to tell me
that I was turning into something he had never been, and could never be, for he
was not a gnome. Still, for all of us, he was only a teacher. He taught us
skills, taught us to become ourselves, set us on the road to becoming all that
we can be—but he did not need to redeem and transform us.”

“As
he did with Culaehra,” Kitishane said softly.

Yocote
nodded. “In these few months, he has become as much a father to Culaehra as the
man who sired him.”

“So
it is not Illbane alone whom Culaehra mourns,” said Kitishane, “but himself,
too.”

Yocote
looked up, startled. Then he said slowly, “I think you are right, maiden. But
how shall we prove to him that he is alive?”

“I
thought I could do that by my mere presence,” Kitishane said with a sardonic
smile, “but it appears not—and I am reluctant to take stronger measures.”

“Understandably;
I can imagine how you would feel if they failed.” Yocote nodded. “No, we must
wake him and revive him before we seek to bring him to embrace life again.”

“How
shall we do that, though?”

Lua
said, with complete certainty, “Revenge.”

“Revenge?”
Yocote protested. “How can he revenge himself upon the Star Stone when it no
longer exists? For it was that which slew our Illbane!”

“No,”
said Lua. “It was Ulahane's malice within it that slew him—and those same
traces of evil exist still, within Bolenkar's mind.”

“And
through Bolenkar, in everything and everyone he has corrupted,” Yocote said,
musing. “Yes, I think you are right, Lua. How could I have failed to see it?”

“So
we must find some agent of Bolenkar's for him to fight,” Kitishane inferred.

“Where
shall we seek?” Lua wondered.

“Oh,
I would not be concerned about that, sister. I do not think that will prove
difficult at all.”

They
came down from the mountains into the foothills. There they camped for the
night, then set off in the dawn. As they crested a rise they saw a column of
smoke rising against the washed blue of the sky.

“If
that is not a campfire close by,” Yocote said, frowning, “it is a very large
fire indeed.”

“I
mislike large fires,” Kitishane said, her face dark. “It might be a woodlot
burning—or it might be worse. Let us hurry to see.” She caught Culaehra's hand
and pulled him along behind. He followed, uncomprehending.

They
came in sight of the village at noon—or what was left of it. It lay in a little
valley, and every hut was reduced to charred timbers and ash. Lua moaned in
distress, and Kitishane cried, “What has happened here?”

“I
would say that was clear enough,” Yocote said sourly. “Raiders have burned this
village. I think you have found the agents of mayhem you sought, Kitishane.”

“Down!
We must see if any still live!” she cried, and tugged furiously at Culaehra's
hand before she set off running down the slope. He looked up, startled, then
kept pace with her, looking about him as if wondering where he was and how he
had come to be there.

Kitishane
skidded to a stop in what had been the village green, and was now only churned
mud. “Is there any still alive? Look about you!”

They
looked, but all they could see were corpses—dead bodies of men, some so young
as to be scarcely more than boys, some gray at the temples.

“Did
they kill all the males?” Lua gasped.

“Yes.”
Kitishane's face hardened. “But none of the women or children.”

Lua
looked up, eyes wide behind the mask. “Why not?”

“Imagine
the worst, sister,” Kitishane snapped. “What could have churned the center of
this village so, Yocote?” She gestured toward the central ring.

“Hoofed
animals of some sort.” The little shaman pointed. “See the sharp edges? And
here and there a whole mark?” He stepped closer. “No cleft prints. These were
horses.”

“Did
they pen their plough animals here?” Lua wondered.

“Either
that, or the raiders drove a herd through, to trample the villagers.” Kitishane
turned livid. “The cowards and poltroons! Peaceful villagers these, but they
dared not fight them without a herd of horses before, and twice as many men as
the folk who lived here coming after!”

Yocote
still studied the mud. “The only footprints are those wearing buskins ... No!
Here are harder edges! And long trails ... wheels? The invaders were fewer, or
they rode in wagons!”

“Either
way, they were experienced fighters, reivers who live by plundering peaceful
folk!” Kitishane raved. “Oh, that I had them within reach of my bow! Cowards
indeed, to war upon those who were not their equals in arms! Vile lechers, to
steal a whole village of women! Despoilers and corrupters, to steal all the
children! They are heartless, they are vile!”

“They
are servants of Bolenkar,” Yocote suggested.

Culaehra's
head snapped up as if he had been slapped.

“Is
this the kind of evil the son of the Scarlet One spreads?” Kitishane said. “No
wonder Illbane made us swear to stop him! This is no wickedness of greed alone,
but cruelty that delights in pain!” She swung on Culaehra. “You, warrior! O
Bearer of Corotrovir! Will you let these reivers carry away the innocent? Will
you let them despoil these folk unpunished? Will you not revenge?”

“Why,
so I shall.” That suddenly, Culaehra's mind returned. He loosened the great
sword in the scabbard on his back and stepped forward to Kitishane. “It is even
as you say—such evil must be stopped, and the innocent rescued before they are
harmed any worse. Where have they gone?”

Kitishane
stared at him in surprise, then ran to throw her arms about him. “Oh, I was so
afraid you would never awaken!”

“It
is as if I have stepped forward from a land of mists and darkness, where I
wandered,” Culaehra admitted. He embraced her, briefly but thoroughly, then
stepped back and called out, “Ho! If any still live, come forth! Tell us who we
fight, how great their strength is, and where they have gone!”

The
village stood quiet all about them. Then a burning beam broke and fell.

“Come
forth!” Culaehra cried again. “If we venture on this chase in blindness and
ignorance, it is more than likely that the enemy will slay us, and your
womenfolk and children will be lost for good!”

His
voice rang through the blackened beams; then the village was still again.

“Well,
we must go, but go carefully,” Culaehra said in disgust, and was turning away
when an old woman rose from behind a pile of char.

“There!”
Kitishane pointed, and Culaehra turned back.

The
woman was old and bent; her clothes were stout cloth, but rent here and there,
and singed at the edges. She came toward them, trembling, her eyes rheumy and
red-rimmed, quavering, “All my pretty ones! My little chicks! Can you wrench
them back from the hawks?”

Culaehra
stood stiff, feeling dread prickle his scalp; the woman was mad! Scarcely
surprising after what she must have witnessed, but still enough to make him shy
away.

Kitishane,
though, stepped closer. “Save thee, grandmother! What hawks were these?”

“Vanyar,”
the woman cried. “They were Vanyar, hard men with long moustaches and beards,
with sheepskins for clothing and wheeled carts to ride in! They came upon us
out of a peaceful sky, shrieking and riding down the hillside behind their
horses, brandishing their axes and calling upon Bolenkar to give them victory!”
She collapsed sobbing into Kitishane's arms.

But
an old man came around the corner of a wall that had not quite fallen in,
nodding. “It is even as old Tagaer says. They were all of them men in the
primes of their lives, and they rode their devil carts through our village,
slashing with their horrible double-edged axes before our men could even bring
up their staves and spades to ward themselves. The rest of the men came running
in from the fields, their forks and scythes at the ready, but there were three
of the reivers for every one of them, and they had horses! They rode around and
about, they cut our men off from one another, they struck down their tools and
split their heads with those evil axes! And all the while they kept up that screaming,
that dreadful warbling shrieking, to drive us mad!”

“It
is even so.” Another oldster came hobbling up, swatting at her smoking hem. “They
slew all the men, and there were fifty of them, a hundred of them, or more!
Then they set fire to the houses and caught the women and children as they ran
shrieking out. The older women they raped right there, in front of their
children; the younger they plagued with ribald insults, telling them they would
save them to warm their beds at nightfall! Then they bound them all, hand and
foot, slung them over their horses' backs and rode away, laughing and singing
their triumph and praising their vile god Bolenkar!” She shuddered as she told
them.

“I
tried to stop them,” another old man said, coming up to them. He held up a
broken staff. “They cut this through with one blow and felled me with a swat,
then left me to lie, dead or alive.”

“They
cared not!” another woman said, and looking up, Culaehra discovered that there
were a score of the ancients all about them. “We all of us tried to stop them,
to drag back our daughters or one or two of our grandchildren at least, but
they beat us all away and told us that the little ones would have the honor of
being raised as slaves to the Vanyar! The girls would grow to whore for them,
the boys to guard them as eunuchs!”

An
old man shuddered. “The weeping and wailing of mothers and children was
horrible, horrible! And we could not stop them, we could not!”

“But
you
can!” An ancient caught Culaehra by the arms. “You are young and strong,
you have armor and a sword! You can stop them, young man! You must!”

“Be
sure we shall!” Kitishane strung her bow. “We shall find them, we shall slay
them all! What vile things are they to wreak such havoc, to reap living men, to
make such grief and take delight in it! We shall teach them what pain they have
wrought! We shall see how they die, how they delight in captivity, what
pleasure they take in their own pain!” She set off toward the plain, and Lua
ran beside her, drying her eyes.

“Be
assured, we shall do all this and more,” Culaehra told the ancients. His blood
was singing in his veins again, and the prospect of action delighted him; he
was alive once more! “We shall bring your daughters and your grandchildren back
to you, if they still live!”

“They
do—the Vanyar will not kill them until they have taken their pleasure,” an old
woman said. “But find them ere nightfall, young man, if you can!”

“Shorten
our journey, then! Did anyone see which way they rode?”

“Down
toward the plain, where your shield-maiden goes,” an old man said. “Belike they
will follow the river, for it has already cut through the hills for them, and
there is something of a trail along its banks, though there were more deer who
made it than people.”

“Many
thanks, old one!” Culaehra turned away. “Find a hearth and keep a fire burning,
to guide us back if we come by night!” He set off, striding quickly to catch up
with Kitishane, who was moving quickly enough herself. Yocote ran beside him;
the warrior said, “Your pardon for my long strides, Yocote, but I must catch
Kitishane before she goes too far.”

“I
think she has gone too far already.” The gnome wasn't even breathing hard. “What
the devil is she thinking of, pitting us against a band of fifty wagon riders
with axes!”

“
'Chariots,' I think they call those carts,” Culaehra said, musing. “Do you
really think your magic is not equal to their axes, shaman?”

“Be
sure that it is!” Yocote snapped. “The question, though, is whether or not they
will slay you while I am spell-casting.”

Culaehra
reached back to touch Corotrovir's hilt, and grinned. “Be sure they shall not.”

When
they caught up with Kitishane, Culaehra asked, “Do you have any plan for what
we shall do when we find these Vanyar?”

“Slay,
stab, slash, and maim!” Kitishane snapped. “What else need we know?”

Culaehra
glanced at Yocote. The gnome shrugged, and Culaehra turned back to his avenging
Fury. “We might wish to set some sort of a trap for them.”