“Truly, my friend, you have made my day!” Exador hugged him. “You have no idea how funny this is! I think this has to be one of the best moments of my life.” Exador stood up, wincing as he placed his hand on his side, obviously tending a stitch from laughter. “To think the entire Council of Wizardry, including that fool Lenamare, thinks that I, Exador of Turelane, am an archdemon!” He shook his head. “This is just too rich! No wonder everyone was looking at me so oddly.”
The mage started pacing to work off his laughter, his smile wider than Randolf had ever seen it. “I think I shall enjoy their tiptoeing and fearful gazes a bit longer before disabusing them of this ludicrous notion!” Exador turned and grinned quite broadly at the stunned Randolf.
Chapter 102
Tal Gor El Crooked Stick trudged down to the stream to fill his leather water bag. His scrying exercises were using up a lot of water, and this meant he had to spend an inordinate amount of time trudging back and forth from his small tent to the stream. This in turn meant he was spending quite a bit of time in pain. The weight of the water basket on the end of his carrying staff put quite a bit of strain on his bad leg. Once again he cursed the fates for allowing him to live after he had failed to kill the wyvern that had mangled his left leg. If he had died like Dar Oth Non, Sep Tar On and Fer Bar Seth, at least he would not have to live with being a crippled apprentice shaman to a dying shaman of a less than sober bearing.
He had dreamed his whole life of being a great hunter and warrior like his father, Sal Gor El Crooked Stick; his mother, Mar An Crooked Stick; his sister, Soo An Crooked Stick; and his two older brothers, Bor Tal El Crooked Stick and Fel Nor El Crooked Stick. Okay, to be fair, he had dreamed of being a greater warrior than his older siblings. Instead, on his second hunting expedition they had encountered a wyvern that had managed to kill the rest of the hunting party before his father, who had been trailing half a league behind the young hunters for just such emergencies, had arrived to finish off the wyvern.
Horrgus Trifeather, the shaman, had been off at a trading post in Murgatroy and only the healing woman, Fesha No Al, had been around to tend him for the first two days. By the time the shaman had returned, his wounds had set in and while between the two of them, his life had been spared, he would never be truly fit for battle again.
That had been four years ago, shortly after he turned thirteen. If not for the shaman detecting a spark of spirit magic within him, he would have been reduced to being a cook’s assistant or some similarly ignoble fate. As it was, he had become apprentice to Horrgus.
He should not complain; shaman was an honored position. Even if the tribe’s own shaman was a bit — well, drunk was the only word he could come up with. He might have said “shabby,” but to be fair, the entire Crooked Stick tribe was a bit shabby and poor these days. The tribe was down to only three bands, totaling no more than 150 warriors and another forty or so children and others, including one shaman and his apprentice.
Tal Gor trudged along, waving to Feth Bar, the lad currently tasked with bringing dinner to the warg camp. The boy was pulling the meat cart, which was currently filled with several large, squirming and roiling sacks. Tal Gor smiled; the wargs were getting live meat tonight. They would be happy. They really only had the resources to capture live game for the wargs a few times a week. Most of the time they fed wargs from the scraps and entrails from the band’s primary kills. It just took too much time and effort to catch and preserve live game for them every day.
Not that there were that many wargs. They did not even have enough for every warrior in the tribe. Certainly not one for Tal Gor to ride regularly. Only on migrations did he get to ride. On those long journeys, his leg had proven to slow him and thus the tribe down. In the old days, he would probably have been left to die or given the coup; but in this day and age, the tribe needed every semi-able hand they could get.
Tal Gor eventually made it back to his tent with his water bucket. He hung it on its small tripod and sat down on his pillow to massage his aching leg. He peered into the empty copper bowl he had been using for scrying. He had not been getting much in the way of results. Today he had worked with chemical components to effect a Viewing; five attempts and nothing. He really was not much of a shaman. He sighed as he rubbed his leg to ease the pain. He would never even be as good sober as Horrgus was drunk.
Tal Gor liked to think all this was not just him. His entire tribe was not what it used to be. He snorted, remembering two years ago on the western plains when the tribe had passed by one of the abandoned fortresses raised by Ferundy thousands of year ago to defend the land from the Orc Hordes. Horrgus had told them that the Ferunds had built multiple lines of defense, fortresses behind fortresses to hold back the tribes. Today the Ferunds only garrisoned the inner fortresses, and barely those. The tribes had not been able to mount a credible force in hundreds of years, and even that last one had been nothing compared to the great days thousands of years ago.
He shook his head and bent over to rummage through the loose pile of mementos that he held on to for no good reason. He grabbed the one that had captured his imagination the most when he first found it buried deep in one of Horrgus’s trunks. It was a roundish stone with two protrusions on the sides near the top, like horns, or so Tal Gor imagined. The worn and barely recognizable face of some orc-like creature was carved on the front of the stone. Horrgus had laughed and said that it was the scrying stone of a long-dead god. The thought of such a god had resonated with him. It seemed to perfectly symbolize the fortunes of his tribe, and his own dreams. He had pestered Horrgus for details of the god, but the shaman had put him off time and again. Only slowly over the years had he learned the tales that Horrgus knew regarding the dead god. Only slowly had he been able to connect the long-dead god to myths told by storytellers.
The tales had been fantastic; at every feast or gathering of the tribes he would ply other shamans and history tellers, as well as storytellers, with questions about the long-dead god. Eventually, he became a sort of resident expert. No one particularly cared about the long-dead god anymore. Even though all remembered his name, and the warriors and history tellers told stories of him now and then, they all considered the god and any related tales fictitious. This was why it took Tal Gor nearly a year to put together the myth of the storytellers with the talisman of the long-dead god. Once he had started to know more, he had enjoyed pretending that he was the last shaman dedicated to the long-dead god.
Tal Gor returned to his tent, ready for bed. Tonight had been his night to help with cleanup and he had spent the pot-scrubbing ordeal listening to his brothers and their friends discussing their last hunting trip and their bravery. He wished so much that he could go hunting again, but he was too much of a burden on the others. It was an old complaint of his; he should get over it. Most nights when he did not have to be out by the main fires, he would return to his tent to study or practice.
He really should work more on his scrying, but he was tired and really did not feel like making another useless attempt. His agitation was enough, though, that he would probably have trouble sleeping if he went to bed immediately. He frowned and then smiled on seeing his dead god’s talisman.