Again came the grunting laugh. “Sarth is Sarth as he has always been. As Golgren has always been Golgren …”
The wind whipped through the Grand Khan’s hair, and his cloak fluttered as if alive. Yet the air seemed still around Sarth.
“Wait,” Golgren ordered Wargroch, as he dismounted.
The younger ogre grunted uneasily, but obeyed. He took the reins of Golgren’s massive steed and hung back, watching warily as his lord drew closer to the shaman.
Ogres respected various gods. But more than deities-even more than Sirrion perhaps-they respected the land, which they believed was an entity everlasting. A decadent, bestial folk, ogres no longer had clerics like other races. But they did have shamans, who were revered as the watchers of the land, fulfilling its needs and guarding against its enemies. That did not mean that, like druids-perhaps their closest equivalent-the shamans helped cultivate the flora and watch over the fauna. Rather, they were servants of the land, beings who listened to its silent whisperings and did what they were told, no matter the cost to them.
There had never been more than a few shamans at any one time. But those that had existed had always been treated with the greatest reverence, until what humans and elves called the Chaos War had taken place. The land had demanded that the shamans stand against the forces of Chaos, and they had done their duty and died for it. To the knowledge of most ogres, not one of their shamans had survived. With the mercurial nature of their race, most ogres had soon forgotten that shamans had ever existed.
But Golgren’s mother had not been an ogre. She had been an elf. And, as an elf, she had looked to the shamans as akin to privileged beings from her own race. And so she had searched for a shaman, and somehow she had found Sarth … Or he had found her.
“You have grown since your mother’s womb,” Sarth cackled as Golgren reached him. “Not so much, but you’ve grown.”
Only the narrowing of the Grand Khan’s eyes gave hint to the emotions he smothered inside. Sarth had not been a shaman with any connection to the half-breed’s village, but he had nonetheless been there the night the captive elf had given birth.
The shaman looked down at his drawings and erased all of them with one sweep of his bony hand. As Golgren seated himself cross-legged before the cadaverous but still tall figure, Sarth started making new drawings. A circle with a cross on one side. A warrior with a club. A sickle moon with a reptilian head atop it.
The drawings were immediately recognizable to the half-breed. The warrior was meant to represent his father. The circle with the cross was his pregnant mother. The sickle moon with the head of a meredrake marked the time of Golgren’s birth.
“Halu i guyvari zuun delahn,” said the shaman, briefly reverting to Ogre. “Such a thing cannot be born between the races. No ogre and elf may breed a child, but a child is bred,” he concluded, peering up at Golgren. “A son is wealth and power. The father must have the mother. He lets live what should not exist for lust of the mother.”
“I know the story,” interrupted Golgren coolly. “Sarth wastes his breath telling what is already known, yes?”
But the shaman continued to draw his pictures and symbols. The head of an Uruv Suurt with a collar around his throat. An ogre standing upon a scale that was tipped to the left even though the ogre stood on the plate on the right.
A burning flower above the ogre.
“Sarth knows those things only because I have told Sarth those things.” The Grand Khan deftly rose. As he did so, he saw by the cave a few small items that clearly had been brought as tokens for the shaman. An amalok horn. A necklace of meredrake teeth. A small clay figure of a female ogre. To Golgren’s kind, each of the offerings suggested a specific purpose or need.
“Few believe in Sarth anymore,” Golgren added. “Fewer yet come to see Sarth. Small wonder.”
The shaman remained unperturbed by his visitor’s insults. He studied his drawings as if seeking something.
“Dalu i surra fwaruus,” Sarth muttered, sounding annoyed with himself. The bony finger thrust out and began a new drawing above the ogre on the scale.
There was a sharp, uncharacteristic intake of breath from Golgren. The shaman was busy with a simple figure that could have been an ogre, a human, or an elf. Yet where the other drawings had included details such as eyes or a nose at least, the figure had an oval head devoid of any features.
Sarth drew lines stretching forth from the body of the figure. Each line had three jagged sections to it. In such a manner did the old pictographs of ogre language indicate something that was bright or that shone.
A figure that shone.
Going down on one knee, Golgren leaned close to the shaman. His voice low, he murmured, “What do you know of that?”
“Kesu idwa. Sarth is told. Sarth does not question what is told. He knows that it is.”
The Grand Khan’s fingers came within inches of the old ogre’s throat, itching to strangle him. Although, if standing, Sarth would have been much taller than Golgren, his body was very frail for an ogre. Golgren could have snapped his neck in two without trouble.
Sarth did not react to the potential threat, save to say, “Yawa idwa i tuz iGolgreni. You are not told what to do, Grand Khan. The choice was and is always yours.”
Edging his hands away, Golgren leaned back. The half-breed slowly ran one foot over the drawings, eradicating them.
“That is the answer to such,” he said to Sarth. “It is as you have said: I make my fate, as I have always. No drawings, no prophecies, no shamans who may speak as surrogates for the Titans …”
Once again ignoring Golgren, Sarth started new images. There were only two. One was a serpent coiled above a mountain; the other was a sword drawn with uncanny precision.
The Grand Khan recognized the first. Sarth had drawn an illustration representing the name of a place.
The Vale of Vipers.
But the sword, on the other hand, could suggest many meanings. A battle that would take place there, perhaps. Hardly astounding, considering recent news. Yet Golgren doubted that Sarth had drawn the sword for that purpose. It looked familiar, a specific design that did not look ogre in cast. It was more like …
Sarth was reconstructing the minotaur head, shaping the image differently.
It suddenly became obvious that the head was larger and rounder than an Uruv Suurt. The muzzle, meanwhile, was much shorter, almost crushed into the face.
“Yawa idwa i tuz iGolgreni,” Sarth repeated, looking down with satisfaction at his latest piece of artwork. “You are not told what to do, Guyvir.”
The Grand Khan said nothing. He touched neither the shaman nor the drawings, but simply turned and headed back to a perplexed Wargroch.
“My lord, did he tell you what you want?”
“No, he told me what he wanted. And that is how it has always been.”
The toad-faced officer reached for his weapon. “Gerad ahn if’hani-”
Golgren stopped him with an unexpected glare. “No one shall touch Sarth, ever.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “And remember, all officers are to speak Common.”
More befuddled than ever, Wargroch beat his fist against his breastplate. “I have dishonored my Grand Khan! I give my life-”
“Stop. We ride.” Without another word, Golgren took the reins of his horse and mounted. Wargroch hurried to climb atop his own.
As the Grand Khan began to turn his mount around, he suddenly heard Sarth chanting in Ogre.
“Zaru iVolantori igada tur iVolantori.”