The Black Shriving (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 2) (32 page)

"In a few days, if all goes well, I will summon a Grand Convocation. I will bring all the tribes beneath my banner, and then lead them down against the Tragon to war. We will sweep the Tragon before us, and all their belongings and goods will be left in our hands. Now, much of what the Tragon have, the highland kragh will take, but they will no doubt carry a number of 'civilized' objects with them that we won't want. We will need somebody to take all that stuff and sell it to the humans or the Orlokor. We'll give that person a percentage of the profits."

"Interesting," said Gregory, rubbing his jaw with his hand. "You basically need somebody who knows the markets, and can place goods in the right hands for the maximum profit."

"Correct," said Tharok. "You will in turn receive payments on a scale that you have never known before. You won't trade with one or two kragh. You will be negotiating the sales of an entire tribe's belongings and treasure."

"Well," said Gregory, "that sounds good. But what do you want in exchange?"

Tharok took up the stick again and prodded one more time at the fire. Then he took the twig and snapped it twice and cast the pieces into the fire pit. "I want to learn your method of controlling Grax."

Gregory laughed and slapped his knee. "Oh, is that all? The heart of my power, the secret to my trade? You want that in exchange for some measly pony hides and bags of fermented goat piss?"

Tharok leaned forward and said very quietly, "Do you honestly think that will be all the Tragon carry?"

"How do you mean?" asked Gregory.

"You're a human. Don't play shy. If you really are a member of a powerful family in this distant capital city, you no doubt know how we kragh are played against each other. Prevented from growing powerful by the manipulations of you humans. Oh, not you, of course, but the others, the humans who run the cities. They set kragh against kragh so that our numbers never grow, our tribes never strengthen."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Gregory, looking off into the middle distance.

"But you do. You know exactly what I mean. Perhaps even how the Tragon are now being paid by the human empire to ally with the Hrakar, their former enemies, against the Orlokor. What I'm saying is this: we are going to descend on the Tragon before they can spend all that coin and shaman stone that has been placed in their hands. Do you think highland kragh want to carry heavy bags of metal around with them while we travel these mountains? No. So, you keep the coin, you sell the goods, and then you buy whatever we need and send it up to these mountains. Clear?"

"What you're saying," said Gregory, chewing on his pipe stem, "is that you plan to hit the Tragon so quickly that you'll be taking the gold that the humans have supposedly given them to stir up trouble. And I will get all that gold."

"To spend for us, yes. Though you'll get your own generous cut. The humans have no doubt invested a lot of money into the Tragon already. However, that gold need not rest with the Tragon. It could go into your pocket. If you help me."

Gregory nodded slowly, eyes half-lidded. "I haven't been a true son of the Empire for more than fifteen years. No real alliance there, I suppose. And my soul is undoubtedly bound for the Black Gate."

"Exactly," said Tharok, not knowing of what he spoke but watching the merchant carefully.

Gregory sniffed and resettled himself on his cushion. "And in exchange, you want to know how to summon and hold the will of the stone trolls."

"Yes," said Tharok.

"What if you can't learn it? It takes a certain kind of mind, a certain outlook, a certain mentality. It takes knowing how to apply pressure and lead the other on. It takes cunning and discipline, passion and patience. I can't just teach this to any human, much less any kragh. No offense. It's not a question of understanding, but of talent."

"Say I have that. Would you teach me?"

Gregory grumbled into his pipe, then took it out of his mouth and banged the bowl against the side of his shoe. He refilled and relit it, and a thick, white smoke began to curl from the bowl. "How about this," he said. "Let's see if you have the ability, even if only in rudimentary form. If I see some form of talent within you, then we will proceed. If you don't? Then promise me that I still get to help you with this endeavor. After all, I shouldn't be punished if you are too slow to uphold your end of the bargain."

"Agreed," said Tharok without hesitation. "What would this test be?"

"We can start with something small," said Gregory. "Maybe a fish, if we can, or a bird. If you have talent, you should be able to influence it enough for us to notice with but a little guidance from me." Gregory grinned at him with his tiny human teeth clamped around the pipe. "We can do it now."

"Good," said Tharok. "Tell me what I must do."

"First, you must listen," said Gregory, puffing out a ball of smoke past his lips. "Take a seat. Focus. What I'll say next I'll say once, and it's your responsibility to understand it the first time through."

Tharok considered the tiny campfire, the human, the mighty stone troll, and then sat down once more, crossed his legs and rested his great forearms on his knees. Gregory waited for him to truly settle, then leaned back once more, holding the pipe up to the sky.

"When I was told by Egard that I had to gather all the goats from the island and bring them to him, I laughed. I needed his power to accomplish that which would cause him to begin teaching me. But Egard wouldn't be moved. So I left, and spent about a week sitting amongst the rocks at the base of the Killspray cliffs. I sat and watched and watched and thought. First, I tried to devise a means to cheat. To pay everybody to bring their goats with them to Egard at an appointed hour. I could feasibly do this and fulfill the order, but something told me that Egard would not be pleased."

Tharok grunted, partially in amusement, partially in agreement. Gregory grinned at him, and proceeded.

"So, I watched the world around me. That seemed the best way to begin. I saw the little firehawks that flitted around the cliffs, hunting fish in the ocean below. They would hover, still as a stone, then fold their wings and drop into the ocean, with only a plume of steam to mark their position. Moments later they would emerge, cooked fish in their talons, and return to their nests of stone to feed their young.

"And I thought, should I be like a firehawk? Take control of the goats by attacking them? And I decided: No. That can't be it. To do it that way is to visit violence upon the animal, to attack it, to come from outside, and every animal resists that which seeks to control it from outside.

"I left the cliffs and walked into the little meadows that were scooped into the bowls amidst the cliff tops. There I saw the goats and sheep. I watched how they stood, how they ate. How they moved together. How some might stand apart, chewing, only to return to the herd and cease to be an individual. And that's when I saw a charwolf, the first and only one I have ever seen. You have heard of them?"

Tharok shook his head.

"No? Then you are fortunate. It appeared amongst the sheep, and at first I didn't recognize it for what it was. I didn't recognize it for anything but a slightly larger sheep, wooly white and filthy as the rest, black-faced, quiet and herd-like. But then I noticed that it was moving in a manner strange to the herd. It wasn't drifting with them, but cutting across their path, changing the direction the sheep were headed. Some followed it, and then more, until the herd was moving back upcountry toward a ridge of trees. I stared, confused, and then I saw the yellow eyes. Once I had recognized it for what it was, I had trouble understanding how I could have ever thought it was a sheep. I stood up and watched as it led the sheep closer and closer to the woods.

"That's when the shepherd noticed, fool that he was, and sent his dogs. But it was too late. The charwolf led the sheep into the woods, all of them following him in a single line, and by the time the dogs were there, perhaps ten seconds after the last had disappeared, the sheep were gone. I joined in the search, but do you think we ever saw any of those sheep again? No, we did not.

"I walked back down to the little town and sat there in the square and thought and thought. The answer had been revealed. The firehawk had captured its prey through force, through attack. The charwolf had taken in one swoop over sixteen sheep all at once. How had it done so?"

"By pretending to be a sheep?" asked Tharok, caught up in the tale despite himself.

"Almost. By convincing the sheep and I that it was one of them. The next step wasn't obvious. I understood what to do, but not how to do it. Then I realized that the very nature of Egard's test meant it had to be possible for me to exercise that power without training. One either has the talent, or they don't.

"That night was the first during the next three months that I spent sleeping in stables and pastures. I would spend hours looking at these animals, the ponies, goats and sheep, and try to convince them through sheer will that I was one of them. I would sit there and stare at them and try to get them to understand that I was a sheep."

Gregory paused, reached into his jacket and withdrew a small flask. He uncorked it, took a sip, then put it away.

"Did you succeed?" asked Tharok.

"No. Four months had passed since Egard's challenge, and I had nothing to show for it. So I decided to leave the pens and instead study the charwolf. What a fascinating beast. Whether it's leading sheep and pigs or children and women, the results are the same. Nobody knows where the victims go. Nobody knows why the charwolf takes them. I traveled to Nous and went to their great university, where I asked just about everybody about the charwolf. Most of them laughed at me and declared that they didn't exist. Others pointed me in the direction of ancient texts that said nothing of use. Finally I discovered an old philosophical tract on the nature of being that used the charwolf as an example."

"The nature of being?"

"What it means to be yourself."

Tharok went to protest, but then chose to stay silent. Gregory nodded in approval.

"The book said that the only way that the charwolf could convince other creatures to follow it, could convince a sheep or a man that the charwolf was really one of them, was for the charwolf to believe it itself. Ah! You cannot imagine the thunderbolt that struck me that night, deep in the bowels of the library, reading those yellowed pages in what felt like the bottom of a book-lined pit. Of course! I had spent months trying to impose upon the animals that I was one of them, commanding them to not see me as human but as a goat, when I didn't believe it myself. I might as well tell you to believe the sky is red. No, what I had to do was believe it myself in some fashion, and then lead the goats to see it too."

"You had to believe you were a goat."

"Indeed! And before you laugh, take a look at Grax, here. Look where such a belief has led me."

Annoyance flickered through Tharok at the human's arrogance. "It's led you to a high mountain pass in the company of kragh and trolls, far from Sige and still alone."

Gregory stopped his amiable puffing on his pipe and narrowed his eyes. He slowly chewed on the stem, the hard wood clicking against his teeth. "True. I can't deny it. I have power, but power does not bring wisdom. What happened to me after my training with Egard is a story twice as long as the one I am telling you, but it has no bearing on this. I'll finish now. Listen closely.

"I returned to the Killspray Islands and told Egard that I would be bringing him all the goats that evening. He largely ignored me, but I marched away, confident. I went to the center of town and sat in the middle of the square and began to think like a goat. That is where the talent is, where you either have the capability or you don't. It's not simply a question of imagination, but rather an ability to truly believe yourself to be other than what you are. To feel four legs beneath you, the hunger in your belly that can only be assuaged for a while. The need to chew cud. The smells, the tastes, the coiled strength in your muscles. To be a goat."

"So, you did it. You believed yourself to be a goat."

"I did. And then I walked all over the island, and every goat followed me. I was in a daze, and it was all I could do to remember my objective. I wanted to stop and eat and sleep and doze. But I didn't. I walked and walked, with no one stopping me, and led over a hundred goats to Egard's hut, where he emerged and saw me standing there, amidst this ocean of goat faces, all of them staring at me. He took me in there and then, and I stopped believing myself a goat and let them go."

"And right now you believe yourself to be a troll? How are you talking to me like this?"

"Only a true beginner or a complete incompetent has to believe himself to be a goat in the way I did, to truly be a goat with all his being to the point where he's barely human. Now, after years of mastery, I can believe I am a troll with only a small part of my mind. As you grow more adept at this training, you begin to believe yourself to be many things at the same time. I have been, all at once, the falcon and the hare, the horse and the man, the woman and the child. I have been the fish in the water and the firehawk in the air, the troll and the mountain goat. I have been many combinations, even once reaching my own personal record of five different creatures at once. That is why Grax stands here protecting me as one of his own. Because in my mind, and in his, I am. Were I to die? Woe to all your kragh, who would suddenly be faced with a lost and angry troll."