Troll Shaman

Chapter Six

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Leaving Gummash

Gheen would have preferred to walk, to take in the sharp scent of the high pine forest, especially when the winds roared in the trees as they would today. But such a luxury was not permitted to a Holy One. Instead, he trundled over the rocky trail in a glorified wooden crate on a bullock cart. That was the way he thought of it, but Mistress Longtooth insisted that it was a palanquin fit for a revered Holy One. Her contraption was more ornate than his, trimmed with gold and bright jewels. That was fine. She rode in her crate, and he in his. It was one of the few times he was afforded privacy apart from her.

Outside, the driver clucked and called to the oxen, guiding the cart along the rising trail. Gheen caught the occasional faint slap of the whip, reminding the yoked team of beasts of their duty. This brought a smile to the Holy One. Until he’d come to know Gabriel Cullen, he’d seen the pakh-hu as cattle to be driven. That’s what trolls did, and humans either accepted it or suffered the consequences. Not that the Three Valleys clan was particularly brutal, not like the Stone Breakers or other northern clans. Perhaps that was why fate or the First Ones had brought the irascible, argumentative sniffer to their village.

But it wasn’t fate, was it? The Holy One ur-Shegg purposely sought out Cullen, knowing the meaning of the scout’s scent-gift. Cullen had used it to track missing trolls seized by the demon Azuk. This gift, however, also singled out Cullen as a potential buruk-ush, a human chosen to bond with a candidate shaman, igniting and magnifying the troll’s monon energy.

A sweet, spicy scent intruded on Gheen’s thoughts. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. With a smile, he reached into a compartment over his head and brought out the basket that Aydin had delivered at their departure from Gammush–a parting gift from Cullen. It was still warm. From within came the fragrant scent of gornok pastries. He had no idea that anyone in Gammush made pastries, but it stood to reason that where trolls went, troll food went.

He bit into the roll, thick with walnuts, honey, and crushed juniper berries. It was the same sweet/savory taste he’d always loved. Why had Cullen thought to do this?

“It’s what we humans do,” his friend had once said. “We give things to each other.”

What an odd notion. At that time, the pakh-hu was his prisoner. Gheen had come to know and trust the human, but he struggled to fully understand him.

He stared at Longtooth’s gaudy carriage lumbering up the road in front of him. The Gray Face Holy One clearly despised Cullen. After the signing of the River Crossing Accord, she encouraged the pakh-hu to stay and oversee the development of trade, while the two Holy Ones returned to Druzh to continue Gheen’s training. Yet there were others, human and trollim, who accepted the peace and could have watched over things in Bridge Town and Gummash. And now, in the face of resuming hostilities, she’d done it again, sending Cullen and Koraya north to negotiate a peace with the Stone Breakers. It would have made better sense to send a larger contingent of humans and trolls to show that both sides wanted peace.

What was Longtooth playing at? It wasn’t simply the longstanding enmity between trollim and pakh-hu. If it were, she’d never have signed the treaty. Her distaste, if not outright hatred, for the humans was clear. What had she said to Cullen at the council? “Our clans will prepare ourselves in the event of your failure.”

And then, with a sinking feeling, he knew: she wasn’t preparing for Cullen’s failure with the Stone Breakers; she was counting on it. And she had manipulated Gheen into sending Cullen and Koraya into a trap. It was as if she wanted division between the trolls and humans. If that were true, his friend and his niece were merely sacrifices on the altar of her malice. But malice to what end? The final subjugation of humankind?

He strained to understand, to see just what she wanted to accomplish, but he was still missing something.

The conclave. She had threatened to convene a meeting of the shamans of the Ten Clans to prevent war. Such a meeting had never happened as far as he knew.

His mind went back to the abandoned, underground city of Dhugash. He and Cullen had discovered it when they fought Azuk. They’d explored only a fraction of its vastness, yet even the fraction they’d seen told of a powerful and ancient troll civilization. Perhaps Longtooth wanted the conclave as a stepping stone to a new civilization–one with trolls firmly ruling a pakh-hu underclass.

A bird–a camp robber–flitted onto the windowsill. Gheen crumbled a bit of the pastry and held it out. The creature ruffled its feathers, snatched the tidbit, and flew away.

As far as he knew, there had never been a gathering of so many Holy Ones, but that was only partly true. There were others who might have memories of such a thing, and they lay within his own head.

Whatever her motives or true aims, one of the most useful things Longtooth had taught him was how to manage the enormous clutter of memories he had received. The sorting chant enabled him to find the spectral thread that marked each memory as specifically belonging to one of his predecessors.

“Anchor the thread from each,” Longtooth told him, “to a particular place in your mind. Then you can peruse them with an uncluttered spirit. It is the difference between a well-tended garden and one tended by a mindless pakh-hu.” She taught him with a sense of urgency, as if she were preparing him for some momentous, ominous thing that loomed on the horizon. She never specified what that was.

He reached into the basket for another pastry, focused on the vurad symbol engraved over the forward window, and muttered the words she had taught him. The symbol shimmered as he activated and focused the monon energy within him, the thing that Cullen, in his simplicity, called “magic.”

He stepped into the space in his mind where memories dwelt. Initially, the mass of knowledge had seemed a dense, ungraspable forest of tangled branches. Thanks to Longtooth, he’d been able to sort a small portion. Now, it was as if six minuscule, well-trimmed trees, one for each of his shaman predecessors, stood near the twisted mass. To fully catalog the thousand years of memories would be a task of years. And while sorting memories by their source was one thing, he needed to find particular thoughts about a specific event: the conclave.

***

Gheen sought for the tree that held Ghanim ur-Shegg’s memories, or at least those he’d been able to extract. The late shaman was the oldest of the Holy Ones in his memories, having lived nearly four hundred years. His memories, even those of Gheen and Cullen from just six months ago, were often clouded and vague, reflecting the elderly troll’s failing memory. That thinness tainted his earlier thoughts, distorting even his most vivid recollections from hundreds of years before.

With a simple mental nudge, he became the old shaman.

He champed his gums, feeling the two missing teeth on the left side. Where had that dratted Aydin gotten to? It was Aydin, wasn’t it? Or Ardin, maybe? Some foolish pakh-hu name that always seemed wrong. Abin? No, it was Aydin, and the wretched young creature was gone again.

“Holy One.”

He froze, then remembered that his servant had brought Boru-Kan, chief of the Deep River clan, to the temple, and then left the two of them alone.

“Hrmm,” he grumbled. “You are resolved, then, Boru? You won’t stay and help us fight against the demon?”

He summoned a touch of monon energy and sent it questing in the direction of the clan leader’s voice. It returned, reading the troll’s aura. Boru-Kan was weary–and frightened.

“I cannot, Holy One. We have lost six more of our clan. They were the oldest and wisest of us. I will lose no more. Besides, how can one battle against a demon? At the new moon, we will take the High Sun Road eastward through the mountains. It is said there are hills south of Ice Lake with good rock. We will build or dig homes there. Perhaps it is far enough that the demon’s power cannot reach us.”

Ur-Shegg ran the claw of his little finger over his broken tusk, savoring the sensation of claw on bone–or tooth, whatever. Then he felt for the cup of wine that Abin–Aydin–should have placed on the table. It was there. Right where his faithful servant always placed it.

“For ages past, the Crow Heart clan has lived in that area. They are not our friends, nor yours. Would you fight them?”

Boru-Kan growled. “If we must.”

Ur-Shegg chuckled. “You would fight other trollim, and not the demon Azuk?”

“We know how to fight trolls. No one can fight a demon.”

“You have spoken to Guram-Kan of my clan?”

“Yes, Holy One.” His guest paused, then continued awkwardly. “The chief of your clan wishes to follow us, with all of the Three Valleys trollim, but he defers to your judgment.”

“As he should,” ur-Shegg grumbled. “The chief of our clan is your friend, but he honors my will in this. How is ur-Parim, your Holy One?”

The other troll hesitated again, then said, “May he live forever. He is not well. The Holy One of the Gray Face clan ministers to his needs, but she is not hopeful.”

Ur-Shegg gave a low chuckle. That was news, indeed. Smiga Longtooth visited the Deep River clan, yet their chief journeyed here to seek his counsel. He smiled, recalling Smiga’s wispy gray hair and womanly charms–and her sharp tongue.

“Did she advise you to leave?” he asked, tapping his shattered tusk.

Boru-Kan shifted, and his heavy wooden chair creaked under his weight. “No, Holy One. She has not spoken to me. Only to our Holy One.”

“And he advises you to leave?”

Somewhere in the room, the Deep River clan chief nodded.

Gheen sat back, absorbing what he had just recalled. The Deep River and Three Valleys clans had been allied, or at least were until Boru-Kan’s people fled eastward into the mountains. Had they survived the journey? And what of their Holy One? Again, Longtooth was there, “ministering” to a shaman. Was she behind Deep River clan’s flight eastward?

He focused on the vurad symbol again, reveling in the prickly tingle of power flowing through him, and returned to ur-Shegg’s thoughts, questing for anything that spoke of a gathering of Holy Ones.

There was nothing.

He pushed back, further and further into the dead shaman’s memories. At a point that must have been hundreds of years ago, a younger ur-Shegg spoke with a troll Gheen didn’t recognize, but whom he knew had recently become chief of the Three Valleys. They discussed preparations for– Blankness, slippery, shifting void. He focused again, drawing more monon through the symbol over the window, and entered the memory again. This time, the vague blankness was accompanied with a sharp twisting sensation in his gut. The memory cleared, but not the pain.

That was odd. No matter how many times Gheen attempted to access the thought, nothing appeared but the white darkness and a grinding physical discomfort. Was he doing it correctly?

For the next few hours, he dipped into each of his predecessors’ collected memories. He found scattered references to the relationships between the Ten Clans. Alliances and allegiances had likely changed over the thousand years of memory, but something far back in Urgan ap-Kun’s time had sundered the clans into northern, eastern, and southern groupings. Each group of three or four clans kept to itself and rejected attempts to align with other groups. One constant, thankfully, was that the Holy Ones of each clan maintained communication with one another, either by messenger or, occasionally, by kukupa bird.

Every shaman’s memories also had the painful voids scattered throughout. He could access adjacent memories, but it was as if particular recollections were protected.

Longtooth again. It had to be. She had taught him the sorting chant and given him the tools to manage the thoughts of a thousand years. It would be a simple thing for her to mask the things she didn’t want him to see. She was manipulating him as she had the Deep River shaman.

He glared at her carriage rattling and bumping ahead of him, and he reached for the jug of wine. Smiga Longtooth had taught him much in six months. Could she be capable of the horrific things he’d imagined? She was undoubtedly one of the most powerful shamans in recent history. And she’d hinted at the conclave. If that was her goal, it could be an attempt to consolidate power, not just over the humans, but over the Ten Clans. She’d isolated the Three Valleys clan from their allies. She’d also isolated Gheen from his sniffer, thus limiting his use of monon power. The vurad rune doubled the effectiveness of his magic, but Cullen’s presence could magnify it tenfold. And what of the Stone Breakers? They’d been a persistent thorn in the humans’ side and had steadfastly ignored pleas to join the River Crossing Accord. Was Longtooth in league with them or merely taking advantage of their warlike nature? Either way, at her bidding, Gheen had sent his friend into their hands.

Gheen forced his weary mind to consider the options: Cullen–and even Isabo the Troll Slayer–could be paraded at a conclave to show the brutish weakness of the pakh-hu. Or they could be executed outright as an example of trollish authority.

From his foray to the memory trees, one intact memory stood out: Krobbah, the third Holy One after Urgan ap-Kun, stood with a pakh-hu named Sharu. The woman, his buruk-ush, fairly pulsed with magnified monon energy, allowing Krobbah to send his thoughts to the Holy One of the Windy Pass far to the east.

That was useful. He stepped through the memory again and again until he knew the odd, sing-song chant and twist of energy needed to perform the task.

He withdrew from the memory space and considered. Longtooth never mentioned this capability, yet all the shamans in his lineage valued communication with other Holy Ones. What else had she withheld? Could he use this to warn Cullen?

He’d grown more proficient at summoning and manipulating monon energy, but it came at a cost. His very bones ached and the ringing in his ears told him he must soon rest.

Drawing deep, relaxed breaths, he again focused on vurad and began the chant. He held his friend’s image in his mind and sent forth a word. Trap.

He wasn’t sure what he expected, if anything. An instant later, an odd welling of emotion rose and disappeared. Surprise. Unease. Had that been Cullen’s reaction to his projection? Gheen willed himself to relax and tried again. There was no response this time, but he smiled. Krobbah had his pakh-hu companion, presumably a buruk-ush to amplify the monon. He had gotten what might have been a flicker of response from Cullen, and that was something.

The connection with Cullen faded, but the shape of the trap was finally clear. Longtooth didn’t want peace; she wanted power, no less than Azuk the demon had. The Conclave wasn’t for consensus; it was a coronation. She intended to force the other clans to bend the knee to her ambition.

And the Cullens? They weren’t casualties. They were currency. She needed the “Strong Hand” and the “Troll Slayer” in chains. If she paraded them broken before the clans at the Conclave, the humans would lose hope, and the trolls would roar for conquest. She was orchestrating a return to the age of slavery.

He wouldn’t let her turn the world backward. He had to get to Isabo and Cullen before they fell into her trap. If he could keep them free, he could deny Longtooth the crown she coveted.