The Shaman (4 page)

“And
Lomallin and Ulahane are the most powerful among them?” someone asked.

Manalo
shrugged. “Perhaps only the most powerful of those who concern themselves with
the destinies of mortal folk. If Lomallin has greater power than most, it is
only by dint of his compassion for humankind, and his concern for their
welfare, which focuses all his energies—and if Ulahane has greater power than
most, it is sheerly by virtue of his will.” He shook his head slowly and sadly.
“Oh, make no mistake—the Ulin are a dying race, while mortals are still
growing, still becoming more and more numerous.”

“And
they hate us for that?” a young man asked, and the girl next to him shuddered.

“They
do,” said Manalo. “Many of those Ulin who are left regard the younger human
race with spite and jealousy. All of them are concerned only with their own
satisfactions—and for many of them their greatest satisfaction is venting their
revenge on humankind.”

“For
no greater crime than that we exist?” a young woman asked, her voice quavering.

“For
no more than that,” Manalo agreed.

“But
what of Lomallin?” asked another. “Surely
he
is not concerned only with
his own pleasures!”

“His
only fulfillment, rather,” said Manalo, “and yes, he is. It is fortunate for
humankind that his notion of reward, his reason for staying alive, is seeing us
thrive.”

“Would
he kill Ulahane, then?” another young man asked, eyes wide.

Manalo
shrugged. “Not willingly—but if he must kill or be killed, I do not think he
would hesitate.”

“So
other Ulin are yet more important to him than us,” a mother said bitterly.

“Of
course,” Manalo said. “What else would you expect?”

“Does
he not think of us as his children, though?”

“No,”
said Manalo, “for he did not make you—well, not very many of you, and those few
were Ulharls. No, he thinks of you as ones who need his protection, but not as
being of his kind.”

“His
pets,” the woman said, even more bitterly.

“Something
more than that,” Manalo answered. “Remember, though, that Ulin are not gods,
and Lomallin is certainly not the Creator. If he favors humankind, it is
because he wishes to, not because he must.”

“But
how can you say they are
not
gods,” Ohaern asked, “when their powers are
so far-reaching, and they have so much to do with our destiny?”

“You,
too, Ohaern?” Manalo looked up sadly, then thumped his staff against the floor
and pulled himself upright. He rubbed his back. “I should not sit so long with
my legs folded at my age. Come, my friends, let us go to bed. I must be up
before the sun tomorrow, and on the road as it rises.”

A
chorus of protest answered him, but he stood firm against it, and it turned
into a tide of regretful good wishes for his journey. Finally, Ohaern ushered
the rest of the clan out and left Manalo to his bed by the fire in the great
lodge.

The
tribesman caught Lucoyo by either arm and slammed him back against the rock. “Bind
him fast,” the chief ordered, and his captors turned to their work with a will,
wrenching tight the rope of twisted hide—around one wrist, around the back of
the slab of rock, and around the other wrist.

“So
much for your pranks, halfling,” Holkar grunted. “Laugh, why don’t you?”

“Yes,
laugh,” snapped Gorin the chief. “Laugh while you can. If my daughter dies, you
will scream soon enough—and long enough.” The back of his hand cracked across
Lucoyo’s face.

“It
was only a jest,” Lucoyo said, then had to pause to spit blood. The bruises on
his face were burning, and he knew they were already swelling. “Only an idle
prank. The spider wasn’t supposed to bite. I didn’t know it
could
bite.”

“You
knew it well enough!” Kragni’s fist caught him on the cheek, sending the bruises
aflame and adding his mark to the others’. “
Everyone
knows that the
white crone has a bite—and that it can kill!”

It
was true enough—but the huge, hairy spider was also the most frightening of its
kind, which was why Lucoyo had chosen it to hide among the rushes Palainir
would use for weaving. If truth be told—which Lucoyo was determined it would
not be—he
had
hoped the crone would bite. Palainir deserved it, for not
only had she spurned his invitation to go walking out to watch the sunset,
which he had expected—she had also given a shriek of laughter and called her
friends to come see the stub of a halfling who had the temerity to approach a
real woman. Burning with shame and seething with anger, Lucoyo had gone away
and thought long about the manner of his revenge. He had made sure to be near,
currying a pony, when Palainir had taken out her basket of rushes to begin
weaving a hat; he had barely kept himself from laughing out loud as she jumped
back with a shriek. But even he had been appalled when the shrieks went on and
on as she flapped her hand, trying to throw the spider from her. Her mother had
seized the whole basket and knocked it against her hand, which was fine, but
she had also turned and pointed a trembling finger at Lucoyo while she tried to
soothe her daughter’s sobs, which was not. None doubted he had done it, though
none had seen him—and Palainir now lay laughing and crying by turns in fevered
delirium.

Actually,
Lucoyo couldn’t blame the spider. After having been tumbled among the rushes, it
had no doubt been frightened and angry; he would have bitten, too. In fact, he
wished he had. But he
could
fault the crone for bad taste, considering
how long it had held onto Palainir’s hand. On second thought, perhaps he would
have, too—the girl was very pretty. On third thought, no—he would not have
wanted to keep that taste in his mouth. If beauty was in the heart and soul,
Palainir was sadly lacking.

Lucoyo
turned his head to spit more blood. “You wrong me, Gorin. I, too, hope she
recovers.”

“I
am sure you do—now that you are caught and bound. For the fright you gave her,
you have been punished with blows and kicks, and you deserve it richly.”

Well,
Lucoyo could have argued that—but it didn’t seem like the time or place.

“But
for her illness, you shall be punished with the ordeal of fire!” The chief’s
eyes blazed. “And for her death, you shall be punished with your own!”

That,
Lucoyo just couldn’t abide. “Go to Ulahane,” he croaked.

The
back of the hand rocked his head again. Through the ringing in his ears he
heard Gorin say, “No. That is where
you
are bound.”

Holkar
and Kragni laughed richly, though Lucoyo could see little humor in the remark,
and surely no wit. Gorin spat in his face—surely a subtle piece of satire,
that—and sneered. “Ponder the ways of your wickedness, half-elf! When my
daughter’s agony is over, yours begins!”

He
turned away, and so did Holkar—but Kragni lingered long enough to slam in
another blow that made Lucoyo convulse against his ropes in agony, and said, “Point-eared
jackass!” with malice and satisfaction before he, too, turned away into the
night, leaving Lucoyo to hang alone in the dark.

The
old, old insult, Lucoyo thought as he struggled for breath and waited out the
waves of pain that radiated from his groin. How he hated the tired old
phrase—they could not even invent a new one! He had been hearing the same
worn-out curses ever since he was old enough to understand words—or, at least,
for as long as he could remember. “Half-elf!” “Point-ear!” “Jackass!” “Monster!”
“Halfling!” and half a dozen others, always greeted with roars of laughter by
the rest of his crowd of tormentors, as if they were bright, new, fresh—and
funny.

Lucoyo
knew just how humorless they were, those insults— and those tribesmen—so he had
bent his mind to thinking up really amusing insults to answer theirs.
Unfortunately, that had brought beatings—but he had fought back, and watched
and studied the big boys as they fought, and bit by bit began to win now and
then. To win, when he was always smaller and lighter than the others! But they
had an answer for that—they came at him in threes and fours, and never gave him
an honest chance at a fair fight. So he had learned to fight back with pranks
that made others laugh until they realized who had done them—he learned to set
the burr in the saddlecloth, to drop the sharpened peg in the boot, to
substitute the sandstone arrowhead for the flinten one and the green shaft for
the seasoned bow. He had learned to answer their clumsy japes with true wit.

“A
rabbit’s ears, and a rabbit’s heart!” Borek had sneered.

“But
a man’s brain between them,” adolescent Lucoyo had answered, “whereas you have
a man’s ears and a rabbit’s brain!”

Borek
turned on him, looming over him. “We shall see a rabbit skinned for that!”

“Skin?”
Lucoyo stared at the hairy chest in front of him. “Have you really a skin under
all that fur?”

“Lucoyo,
you go too far!”

“No,
it is
you
who go to fur ... No, no, I am sorry, Borek!”

Lucoyo
held up both hands in a parody of pleading. “Have it as you will, suit your
pelt—I mean, your
self.”

“I
shall see
your
pelt stretched to dry!” And Borek waded in with a
roundhouse punch.

Lucoyo
leaped back adroitly, then ducked under the next punch and came up fist first
and hard. The blow cracked under Borek’s jaw, jarring his teeth; he staggered
back, and Lucoyo followed close—face, belly, face—punching hard.

Borek’s
friends roared anger and leaped in.

Lucoyo
jumped aside just before they landed—so they landed on Borek, who howled with
anger, and Lucoyo leaped away, running. Borek and his friends shouted in rage
and came pelting after.

Lucoyo
ran like a river in flood, with quick glances back over his shoulder. Borek
lumbered along, farther behind every minute, with most of his friends a dozen
yards ahead, almost keeping pace with the sprinting half-elf—but Nagir was
catching up, coming faster and faster, closer and closer . . .

Lucoyo
slowed down, just a little bit, just as much as might come from tiring ...

Nagir
shouted and kicked into a wild dash.

At
the last second, Lucoyo pivoted and slammed a fist into Nagir’s belly. The
bigger boy doubled over, eyes bulging, and Lucoyo hooked the fist into his jaw.
Nagir straightened up, and Lucoyo hit him with three more punches before he
fell. Then he had to turn and run, for the other boys were catching up.

“Run,
rabbit, run!” Borek bellowed in fury as he plowed to a halt, shaking his fist. “Run,
rabbit-heart! You cannot outrun the council!”

That
didn’t worry Lucoyo. He came home at dusk, confident the men of the tribe would
realize that when it was five against one, the one was rarely at fault.

He
was wrong.

As
the men beat him with sticks for having beaten one of their sons, the
fatherless half-elf learned not to trust in authority, not to rely on the law.

But
quick fists and fleet feet were only one way. Lucoyo learned also to wield
truth as a weapon. He learned to answer scorn with the loud announcement of
things his tormentors thought secret, learned to ferret out each person’s
covert shame and charge them with it aloud, in answer to their sneers. It
earned him beatings, yes, but the insults did slacken a bit. More importantly,
he felt the fierce elation of revenge.

Thus
had Lucoyo learned to be the jester—but the jester whose tongue was barbed and
poisoned, whose jests were edged and honed. They hated him for it, of course,
but by their own law, they could do nothing as a clan, take no action against
him.

In
private, of course, they could beat him, and did—if they came in threes and
fours. In fact, he decided they had kept him so long because they needed
something to punch.

Oh,
he hated them! Why had
he
stayed with them so long?

Because
his mother still lived, that was why—his mother, seduced by that wicked elf,
who must surely have mocked her when he was done. Oh, she had told Lucoyo that
he had bade her come to dwell with him, but she had been loath to leave her own
kind—wisely, Lucoyo was certain, for what could she have been but a servant in
an elfin hill?

But
perhaps,
the traitorous hope whispered, as it always did,
perhaps they
would have honored her—honored
you,
if you had grown up with them!
Perhaps he would have married her .. .

Ridiculous!
Lucoyo was actually grateful for the stab of pain that came with his angry
shake of the head; it helped him deny the thought. His mother would have been a
concubine when she was young, a wet nurse as she aged, and would now be a
scullery maid to an elf-wife! No, she had done unwisely to have gone to that
blasted elf’s bed, but had then done as wisely as she could to come back to her
nomad clan’s camp and endure the shame of their censure.

Her
clan . ..

It
had never been his, not really. He had always been the outsider, the odd one,
the detested stranger whom they could not quite exile with a clear conscience
...

Until
now.

He
had made his fatal mistake, he had played one prank too many, taken one revenge
too vicious. He had to admit, facing his inner heart, that he had hoped the
spider would bite, hoped the chief’s daughter would die as she deserved, for
the mockery she had heaped on him, that they all had heaped on him. True, she
had been only one among many, and it was not right that she suffer for all of
them ...

Then
make them all suffer,
something wicked whispered inside him—Ulahane’s
voice, perhaps; but Lucoyo was ready to listen to it now, ready and more.
Revenge,
it whispered,
on them, on all the other mortals who would have
treated you just as badly, on the elves who would have treated you worse!
Revenge, on every human of every race and breed! Revenge on anything that
lives!