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“And was it a wolf ?”
“Yeah. No. I mean.” Ergund’s expression was still queasy. “It looked like a wolf, a she-wolf, I think. But it was walking on its hind legs, man. You know, like one of those beggar’s trick dogs you see in Ishlin-ichan. But—big. Tall as a man.”
“Did it attack you?”
The herdsman shook his head. “No. It fucking talked to me. I mean, its mouth didn’t move or anything, but I could hear this voice in my head, like really soft snarling. It just stood there all reared up on its back legs with its paws held out like it wanted me to take hold of them, and looking me in the eyes the whole time. Close enough I could smell its fur. Close enough to lick my fucking face if it wanted.”
“So it spoke. What did it tell you?”
“It told me to come to you. Told me that you were waiting for a message.”
Poltar felt the faintest shiver of his own now.
“It called me by name?”
“Yes. It said it knew you. That you’d been waiting for a message, a second message, it said.”
Kelgris’s words, in the shadowed upstairs room, out of the dead girl’s throat. I bring a message from my brother Hoiran, the one you call Ura
He moistened his lips.
“So tell me the message.”
Ergund looked down at his hands again. “It said . . .”
His voice died on the syllables, the breath hissed out of him unused. The shaman felt a slow pounding begin in his chest. He held himself in check, and waited.
Finally, Ergund looked up, and now there was something almost pleading in his face.
“It said my brother’s time as clanmaster has come and gone,” he muttered.
The quiet descended like the finest muslin cloth, coating everything in the curtained alcove and, as it seemed, beyond. Poltar felt it tick through his veins, settle in his ears, send everything commonplace away.
He sat rigid.
Ergund opened his mouth. The shaman raised a hand for silence, then got up quickly and went back into the main space of the yurt. The acolyte looked up from his flensing, saw his master’s expression, and set down his tools immediately.
“Master?”
“That knife looks as if it could do with sharpening. Why don’t you take it over to Namdral and see if he can’t put a decent edge back on it. Or better yet, see if he’ll dig you out a couple of fresh blades and edge them up for us. Tell him I’ll settle with him after the ceremony.”
The acolyte frowned. There was nothing wrong with the flensing gear, and they both knew it. And new knives weren’t cheap. But he knew better than to argue with Poltar or expect explanations. He bowed his head.
“As my master desires.”
Poltar waited until he’d gone, watched from the yurt’s entrance as the man moved away through the firelit bustle of the camp, then pulled the hangings tight and went back to Ergund. He found the clanmaster’s brother getting to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Look, it’s . . . I shouldn’t have come. Grela talked me into it, she said you’d know what to do.”
“Yes. She’s right. I do.”
“Well,” Ergund grimaced. “I mean, it was just a dream, right?”
“Was it?”
“It felt like a dream.”
The shaman trod closer. “But?”
“But I . . .” Ergund shook his head. It was like watching a buffalo only halfway stu
“You were really out there, Ergund.”
“In this cold?” The herdsman snorted, common sense shouldering through the press of arcane fear. “In bare feet? Come on, I’d have fucking frostbite by now. My toes’d be turning black.”
Poltar crowded him back to his seat, stood over him. Kept his voice low and hypnotic.
“The dream world is not this world, Ergund. It echoes this place, but it is an otherness, another aspect. It has its own seasons, its own natural laws. You did walk there; the grass on your feet is a sign. It’s the Dwellers’ way of showing you that what you dreamed is real. It’s a warning to take this seriously. Your wife was right to send you to me. This is a path we must walk together.”
“But, I mean, this thing, the upright wolf. It might have been a demon, sent to trick me. Sent to sow discord in the clan.”
Poltar nodded as if giving it consideration.
“That’s a good point. But demons do not have the power to cross the expressed will of the Dwellers. If it was a demon that drew you out there and spoke to you, then it did so with the Sky Home’s blessing.”
And inwardly, he recalled something his father had once said, in an unguarded moment as they sat out at vigil together one spring night. Poltar’s mother had passed away the previous winter from the coughing fever, and Olgan had changed with her passing in ways the young Poltar was still trying to fathom.
Common men make a distinction between gods and demons, Poltar, but it’s ignorance to talk that way. When the powers do our will, we worship them as gods; when they thwart and frustrate us, we hate and fear them as demons. They are the same creatures, the same twisted unhuman things. The shaman’s path is negotiation, nothing more. We tend the relationship with the powers so they bring us more benefit than ruin. We can do no more.
And quickly, glancing guiltily up from his brooding, Never speak of this to anyone. Men are not ready to hear this truth—though sometimes I think women may be. Sometimes, I think . . .
But he lapsed into brooding silence again, staring at the fire and listening to the ceaseless wind off the steppe. And he never spoke of the matter again.
“You really think,” said Ergund uncertainly, “that the Sky Home has taken against my brother?”
Poltar seated himself with care. He leaned forward. Spoke softly. “What do you think, Ergund? What does your conscience tell you?”
“I . . . Grela says . . .” Ergund stared down at his hands, and his expression suddenly turned harsh. “Fuck it, he doesn’t behave like a clanmaster anymore. You know, coming here, I passed that little slut Sula on her way to his yurt again. I mean, she’s what, fifteen? What’s he doing with a girl like that?”
“I don’t think you need a shaman to answer that,” Poltar said drily.
Ergund didn’t appear to hear him. “It’s not even like it’ll last. This is going to end up just like that half-Voronak bitch that threw herself at him last year. Couple of months, he’ll get bored and drop her. If there’s a child, he’ll use his mastery privileges to claw settlement for it out of the clan herds, and then he’ll move on to whichever big-titted slut next widens her eyes at him across a feasting board.”
He stopped, appeared to rein himself in. He got up and tried to move about in the alcove. He threw out the blade of one open palm.
“Look, if that’s how Egar wants to piss his time away, I won’t gainsay him. A man pitches his yurt where he will, and then he has to lie in it. I’m not some fucking southern priest, trying to nitpick every ball-scratching moment of every other man’s life. But this isn’t just about Egar and how he lives. I mean, it’s fucking Greasing Night, for Ura
“Getting greased in private between the legs?”
It got a weak laugh out of Ergund. “That’s right. Taking Greasing Night all the wrong way, isn’t he?”
“He is neglecting his duties, yes.” More seriously now. “Not all men are born to lead, there is no shame in that. But those who are not must accept the fact, and cede to those who can carry the responsibility better.”