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 hou
r 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.
Chapter 27
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.
And apparently he was going to have to be the one who worried, for Ohaern dropped down to lean back against the stone wall and did not move. Instead his body began to go loose, muscle by muscle, and tears welled from beneath his eyelids.
Panic seized Lucoyo, more intense than any he had ever felt before. Ohaern had become the rock of his life ever since he had left the tribe that had raised him, so seeing the big smith reduced to jelly and tears shook him even more deeply than watching Manalo shed his disguise and emerge as Lomallin, only to be slain by the Scarlet One. He dropped to one knee and said in as soothing a tone as he could manage, “It will be well again, Ohaern.”
“It will not!” the smith groaned, in the voice of heartbreak. “Ryl is dead, Manalo is gone, Lomallin is dead, and nothing shall endure to uphold hope! It is vain, Lucoyo—all the world is vain and hollow, and life is without meaning!”
The panic stayed, deepening into the horrible feeling for Lucoyo that he was confronting fate. “There is hope, there must be!” Inspiration struck. “Remember that the sage said I must care for you because you are the key to this war! It is you who can slay the Scarlet One!”
“What purpose?” Ohaern groaned through his tears. “What purpose, when he has slain Lomallin?”
“Revenge! Confound you, man, is your nature so kindly that you do not even crave revenge?”
“What matter? We are doomed, we are all doomed! How can I take revenge on Ulahane? How could anything kill him, now that he has slain Lomallin?”
Clear as if he were there beside them, Lucoyo heard Manalo’s remembered voice. He said, “The legend! Ohaern, remember the legend! That only after he has been slain can Lomallin become stronger than Ulahane!”
“What a deal of nonsense!” Ohaern cried with building anger. “How can any man become stronger after he is dead?”
“He is an Ulin, not a man.”
“Was! Do not say ‘is’ to me, Lucoyo!” The anger was building toward rage now. “Lomallin is dead! I saw him die with these eyes! Do not pretend he still lives!” Suddenly the smith lashed out, striking a blow that sent Lucoyo flying down the cave and crashing into a wall. “Go away! Leave me! Stop plaguing me with your words of brightness! Leave me to my grief and let me die in peace!”
“All right, if that is your wish!” Lucoyo cried in anger of his own. He leaped up, cracked his head on the roof, cursed, and strode out of the cave, leaving Ohaern to his tears and his wallow of despair.
Ohaern wept long, deep racking sobs that shook his whole frame and drew from him every dram of energy he possessed. At last, worn out, he fell over, lying long on the cold stone of the cave floor, and wept the last few sobs, which were devoid of tears. Finally he quieted, and sleep enfolded him, a sleep that shrouded
him in gray mist, a fog such as had lain over the grass when they buried Ryl.
But it was not Ryl who made those mists part—it was golden light, and as the mists burned away, Ohaern saw against it the silhouette of the voluptuous, translucent-veiled female form of his dream, and knew he saw the goddess, the Ulin, again. He dared to breathe her name: “Rahani.”
“Come to me, Ohaern.” The veiled arm beckoned “Seek through the world inside and come to me. Come, and you shall have comfort, you shall have consolation, you shall have ecstasy such as mortal men only dream of—if you can find me ... if you can reach me ... if you can touch ...”
But her arms were moving, waving, as her hips churned in a dance, and the veils were enfolding her, hiding her, turning to mist, to fog, in which she disappeared.
“Rahani!” he cried in the tearing voice of despair, and reached out to grasp, to draw, but his hand closed on rock, and the gray of the mist was hardening into stone, a stone that seemed to warm, to turn yellow, and Ohaern realized he was seeing sunlight on rock, a lump of rock swelling out of the cave wall.
He stilled, his eyes flicking up and down, discovering that he was in the cave and that his body felt like lead. He pulled himself up sitting, but hung his head, muttering, “I am awake.”
“Yes, praise the gods!”
Ohaern looked up, startled, to see Lucoyo holding out a water skin. In his amazement, Ohaern did not even think to ask where it had come from, only took it and squirted a few swallows into his mouth. Then he handed it back. “I thought you had left me.”
“So did I.” Lucoyo shrugged. “But I stepped out into that freezing, barren night and realized I had no place to go.” He sighed. “I might as well die here with you, as die fighting a manticore or being squeezed to death by a lamia. Unless, perhaps, you have decided not to die?” He did not seem very hopeful.
Ohaern was silent a moment, then said, “I do not know, Lucoyo.” He looked up, looked directly into the half-elf’s eyes and said, “You see, I have fallen in love.”
The Shaman Page 31