The Sage (11 page)

“Yes,
the horse barbarians on the steppe, to the east!” Culaehra snapped. “They still
ride there, and train themselves to wreak mayhem! What did your Ohaern gain
after all?”

“He
drove them away from us for five hundred years. Is five centuries not enough
for you?” Kitishane asked with withering sarcasm.

Culaehra
glared at her, anger filling him—but the unicorn raised its head and moved
silently to stand behind the woman, then lowered its horn. Culaehra throttled his
anger back, but watched the beast with narrowed eyes. Lua, misunderstanding who
was threatening whom, reached up to stroke the unicorn's nose. Surprisingly, it
accepted her touch.

“Still,
it was not the Vanyar alone whom Ohaern overcame, but he who stood behind them,”
Yocote reminded them, “dread Ulahane, the god of evil, who had sent forth his
Ulharls—half-human children of the women Ulahane had raped—to suborn human
agents, then send them out to seduce the barbarians to his worship.”

“Others,
too,” Lua murmured.

Yocote
nodded. “Other Ulharls he sent to overawe the jackal-headed folk and command
them to do his bidding. Indeed, some of his emissaries bribed whole cities to
Ulahane's worship and became high priests, rivaling the kings in power. But Ohaern
journeyed through those cities while Manalo wandered the land to raise other
folk to fight the human-hater. Ohaern exhorted the city-folk and swayed them
back to Lomallin, then taught them how to fight off the Vanyar when they
attacked. With Lucoyo, he went to one city after another, and was safe—but in a
farming village where the folk had been swayed to worship Ulahane in the guise
of a hag, they were nearly slain as sacrifices, and would have been, had not
the goddess Rahani appeared to Ohaern in a dream to warn him. He struck aside
the priestess who sought to slay Lucoyo, and the two of them fought
back-to-back. Still, what are two against a whole village?”

“But
Manalo came back.” Kitishane was hanging on every word, almost hungrily.

Yocote
nodded. “Manalo came back. The wizard appeared to save them, then led them out
into the desert and disappeared again. There, in the center of a ring of
standing stones, the god Lomallin came to earth, to fight Ulahane in personal
combat— and was slain. Ohaern and Lucoyo fled, grieving, and Ohaern sank into a
deathlike sleep, wishing to die indeed—but Rahani appeared to him again and
bade him live. He came back to life, but even then, he and Lucoyo would have
died in that desert, had they not been saved by a band of nomads. Thus they met
Dariad the Defender, the chieftain who gathered an army of nomads to fight at
Ohaern's command. Then those whom Manalo had raised came to them—the homunculi
made by the wondersmith Agrapax; renegade jackal-men who had fled the harsh rule
of Bolenkar, eldest of the Ulharl, Ulahane's sons; and tribes of hunters, each
few in number, but together, a mighty army. They marched on Ulahane's capital
city—but Ulahane sent his Ulharls out to murder them, each leading a band of
monsters. Ohaern, Lucoyo, Dariad, and their people fought and bled mightily—but
they persevered, slew the Ulharls, and drove the monsters away. So they came to
the walls of the city, where Ulahane himself confronted them—but Lomallin's
ghost sent down lightning and slew the evil god, whose soul sped to the sky to
fight Lomallin again. There they battled, forging stars into weapons—and there
Lomallin's ghost extinguished Ulahane's completely. Seeing, the folk who had
worshiped the human-hater cried out in despair and turned to the worship of
Lomallin.

“Then
Ohaern and his friends marched victoriously through all the cities of the Land
Between the Rivers, freeing them from bondage to the Ulharls whom Ulahane had
left to rule them, and preaching Lomallin's kindness. The hard task done,
Dariad led his nomads home, where the desert folk heaped honors upon them. The
desert folk would have honored Ohaern and Lucoyo all their lives, but those two
were lonely for forests and streams, and yearned for their homeland. Back to
the north they went— and found that some of Ohaern's tribesmen had lived after
all, though in hiding. Among them was the woman Lucoyo loved. They wed, and
lived to see many grandchildren about them— but Ohaern could not stay; the
presence of his homeland wrenched his heart with memories of his dead wife. No,
he wandered away into the wastelands, where the spirit of Rahani could console
him. She led him to a magical cavern, where he fell asleep, and lies dreaming
of Rahani.”

Illbane
stared in shock. How on earth had people come to know of that?
Beloved, have
you been telling tales in people's hearts?

He
thought the breeze answered,
Do you not wish to boast?
but Yocote was
saying, “Now and again, the soul-cries of human misery disturb Ohaern's
slumbers, but the trials of his people pass, their cries die down, and he
sleeps again. The day will come, though, when too many people dwell in misery,
too many suffer from the tortures that the strong and cruel wreak upon the weak
and gentle.”

Culaehra's
head snapped up, his eyes smoldering.

“When
the cries from the hearts of the oppressed echo too loudly within Ohaern's head
and do
not
die down, they shall wake him, and he shall break forth from
his cavern and stride out to free all slaves and smite all the wicked.”

“Why,
what a stock of nonsense this is!” Culaehra scoffed. “The strong shall always
rule, and the weak shall always suffer!”

“Ohaern
will free the weak and bring them to rule,” Yocote said with massive
tranquility.

“If
the weak rule, they shall cease to be gentle! Indeed, when enough weaklings
band together, the first thing they do is to turn on a strong man and torture
him!”
Culaehra's eyes glowed with anger and bitterness. “Speak not to me of
the virtues of the weak—I know them for what they are and know that only their weakness
prevents them from showing the cruelty that is buried within them!”

Kitishane
stared at him, appalled. “I think you really mean that.”

“Do
not seek to tell me differently,” Culaehra said, quietly but with such intense
bitterness that Kitishane and Lua recoiled. “I have lived it too much, seen the
weak turn on the strong too often!”

Yocote's
eyes flared, but he only said, “How often is too often?”

“How
often is too often when the strong smite
you?”
Culaehra returned. “Once
is too often, then—but when it is you who do the smiting, there is no limit!”

His
head rocked with a sudden blow. He whipped about with a roar, starting up to
fight.

But
the amulet bit his throat with coldness, and Illbane's eyes burned down at him
with such ferocity that Culaehra hesitated, feeling his spirit quail—and in
that moment of hesitation, Illbane demanded, “Was that too often?”

Snarling,
Culaehra lunged at the old man—but even seated, somehow Illbane leaned aside,
and Culaehra blundered past, tripped, and fell. He rolled over to shove himself
up—and found that blasted staff pointed between his eyes again. “If you truly
believe that for the one who strikes the blow it is never too often, then
Ulahane's spirit is not fully dead!”

With
sudden elation, Culaehra realized how he
could
strike back at this
magically invulnerable dotard. What matter blows, if he knew he had hurt
Illbane with his words? “There never was an Ulahane—nor a Lomallin, nor a
Rahani! They are nothing but tales the slaves make up to give themselves enough
hope to slog their way through the next day, through all their days to their
graves, where there is no afterlife nor any thought nor virtue, but only dirt
and worms!” He trembled within at his own audacity, his blasphemy, but stood
crouched and ready for the blows of Illbane's rage.

But
the sage only frowned, turning grave—and the probing of his eyes spoke of an
understanding so deep that Culaehra shrieked again, “Dirt and worms! There are
no gods, none, for if there were, no one would suffer!”

“You
believe that so that you will be free to hurt others,” Yocote snapped.

But
Illbane waved him to silence and said, “You would not speak so if you had not
suffered in your own turn, strongman.”

“You
have seen to that!” Culaehra had to turn away from the understanding, the
compassion in those eyes, had to make it sink under the weight of anger.

It
would not founder. “Think!” Illbane commanded. “Before the first hurt that was
given you, before those weaklings of whom you spoke first banded together
against you, there was a stranger who stayed awhile in your village!”

Culaehra
froze, staring into the vortex of those eyes, turning pale.

“Before
the first great cruelty of your life, there was a stranger!”

Suddenly
the memory crashed through the barrier in his mind. Culaehra sank down with a
high, keening cry, clutching his head in his hands.

“He
came, he stayed, he talked!” Culaehra went on inexorably. “All liked him, all
respected him, even when he began to talk to certain of the villagers one at a
time.”

How
had he known? Culaehra himself had forgotten. In all his memories of that awful
childhood day, he had forgotten the stranger who had come a fortnight before,
who had stayed a fortnight after, whose words had swayed the other children
against him, made the adults fear and shun him. “You could not know!” the
outlaw cried. “You could not ever have known!”

“I
need know only that Ulahane's evil lives after him,” Illbane told him, “lives
in the body of his eldest Ulharl, Bolenkar. He it is who has sent his own
corrupted minions throughout the lands, through all the lands, from his
stronghold in a southern city!”

Culaehra's
head snapped up; his eyes locked on Illbane's. “Bolenkar? But he is a tale, a
lie!”

“He
is as real as you or I, and he lives,” Illbane told him. “He dwells in
Vildordis, a city of evil and cruelty, where slaves are brought only to be
tortured, and where the miasma of corruption overhangs the whole citadel like a
cloud. Oh, be sure, he lives, doughty hunter—lives, and seeks to do his
father's work, but do it even better, to succeed where his father failed, for
only thus does he feel he can revenge himself on the blasted ghost who raised
him in humiliation and brutality.”

“Has
it come again, then?” Yocote looked up, his huge eyes tragic, his whole face
wan. “The time of devastation?”

“It
nears,” Illbane told him, “for there are far too many who hearken to Bolenkar's
promises of wealth and victory and pleasure, who turn to worship him by bloody
sacrifice in his temples and worship him even more in their actions—in wars
upon the weaker, in conquest and rapine and slaughter and destruction. But
Bolenkar's agents go before him, to seduce good folk to his ways and, after
they have learned to enjoy depravity and cruelty, to his worship.”

“And
my village saw such a one,” Culaehra groaned, head
still
in his hands—so
that he could not see the paleness of Kitishane's face, see her trembling as
she, too, remembered. “Have I, then, become a finger of Bolenkar?” Abruptly,
Culaehra shook himself, then looked up at Illbane with maddened eyes. “I cannot
believe that I swallowed your lie whole! What am I saying? A finger of
Bolenkar? He is a myth, a legend, like these gods you speak of, like this dead
Ohaern and his more-dead Lucoyo!”

“Lucoyo
is dead; his blood lives on,” Illbane confirmed. “But Ohaern lives, and Rahani,
too.”

“Oh,
and no doubt he has spent five hundred years in her embrace, and it was that
which kept him alive!” Culaehra braced for the blow again.

But
the wretched old man only nodded slowly, gaze still locked with Culaehra's. “But
Rahani is not a goddess, nor were Lomallin and Ulahane.” He raised a hand to
still the protests of the others. “They were Ulin, members of an older race, a
magical race, a race that could not be slain by any but one another— a race
that could have been immortal, for none of them died unless they wished it or
were slain by one another. Still, they did murder each other in a war over the
younger races, and the few left did pine away and wish to die—save for Rahani
and a few others, who dwell alone, solitary and morose. Their half-human
children, the Ulharls, are not immortal, but they live long, very long.”

“Can
they be killed?” Culaehra whispered.

“They
can, and by human beings—but they die hard, very hard, and the chance of a
human living long enough to finish that slaying are very poor, the more so
because they are huge, half again the height of a man, and very, very powerful,
both in muscle and in magic.” He shook his head slowly. “No, my friends. The
hour of Bolenkar's dominion approaches, and if Ohaern does not rise again to
lead good folk against him, all humankind will sink beneath his yoke and die by
the strokes of his lash.”

“Cannot
this Manalo help us?” Culaehra jeered. “If Bolenkar still lives, why not
Manalo?”

“Manalo
was
Lomallin, in the disguise he adopted to walk among men. He did not
abandon Ohaern and Lucoyo in that circle of rock—he transformed himself, took
on his natural shape, and swelled into the god he was. When his ghost fought
Ulahane, the sword he forged from stars broke, and a fragment of it fell to the
earth, far to the north.”

“How
could you possibly know these things?” Culaehra scoffed.

“Yes,
how?” Lua asked, her voice trembling, her eyes wide.

“How
indeed?” Yocote frowned. “Our wisest elders, our priests and wizards, have not
heard this, O Sage. How could you?”

“I
have lived longer than they,” Illbane returned, “and the knowledge that was
lost through generations of telling and retelling, I still hold.”

“How
old are you?” Kitishane whispered, but Culaehra turned away, stalking out into
the darkness alone, and Illbane turned to watch. “I must guard him, my friends.
Do you speak with one another, then sleep.” He rose, leaning heavily upon his
staff, and started out into the night.