The Shamans at the End of Time, page 6
Chapter 5
“Vlad is not a Kalach!” Rune shouted, loud enough to be heard by everyone in front of him. “He killed a bear with just a knife and saved three of our children.”
“It’s a strange knife he carries,” one man said.
“Strange it may be, but a knife alone can’t kill a bear. Siman,” Rune turned toward the boy, “why did you tell the village that a Kalach had been captured?”
Siman glanced at Rand, hoping that he would say something, but his older brother ignored him. Rand knew about Vlad. Why did he lie to me? Caught between the anger of being punished for something that was not his fault, and the thought that he might be called a traitor, Siman did not know what to say. Rune understood that there was more going on than he initially thought and did not interfere, allowing the boy to make up his own mind.
“Rand told me,” Siman finally said, no longer looking at his brother.
“Vlad saved your other brother by killing a bear,” Rune said to Rand.
“I thought he was a Kalach.”
“Darn,” Rune addressed the Chief of the Hunters, “you must discipline your oldest son. He will join the apprentice hunters for one month.”
“Isn’t that severe for a simple misunderstanding?” Darn asked, his voice venomous.
“Vlad saved your youngest son, and Rand acted like stupidly. The people in the village were worried, and Selma could have had her head smashed.”
“Selma was not hurt.”
“Not thanks to Rand. He will spend one month with the apprentices.” Rune did not wait for an answer and turned, followed by Darn’s angry eyes.
“Let’s go, Rand,” his father whispered. I was shamed in front of the village, Darn thought, his eyes fixed on Moira’s back; his hate for her was greater than for Rune. I am the strongest man in the clan and the Chief Hunter. I feed the clan, not that shrew and her cripple. She’s already hoping that Vlad may be able to replace my son. Rand must break Vlad’s bond with Malva. My son will be the Chief of the village, not a stranger. I will not allow it.
Feeling Darn’s stare with her shamane senses, Moira turned abruptly, and their eyes locked. Cursing inside, Darn was the first one to look away, and he walked quickly, vanishing behind a hut. There’s too much violence and resentment in Darn for him ever to make a good chief, she thought. My heart was right when I chose Rune as my mate, instead of Darn. Seventeen years ago, Rune and Darn were her two bonds. It felt to her as if it was only yesterday. She shook her head, and walked away too. The girls, Edna and Vlad were already at the large table on the covered terrace in front of her hut. Her path intersected with Rune’s, and she took him by the arm.
“You are an idiot,” Darn growled at his son, when they were alone, in front of their hut. “Next month, you were to have your first hunt and become a man. Now, I have to postpone it for half a year. Rune was so eager to punish you.”
“Vlad made a bond with Malva,” Rand said, nervously.
“And? Any girl or young man can have two bonds. That’s the rule. You were her first. The bond between you two is almost half a year old, and he is a stranger. Act wisely, and Malva will be yours.”Rune wants to break Rand’s bond, Darn thought, and a wave of rage passed through him. He did not display it, not wanting to worry his son even more.
“how did it happen so fast between them? It takes months to make a bond.”Rand did not know about the other bond between Selma and Vlad. As any other Vlahin, he was able to know only his own bonds and the bonds his two girls had with another man In time, he would learn about Vlad’s other bond, as observation was also a tool for harvesting knowledge. Only the shamanes or the shamans knew a person’s bonds by looking into their minds.
“Who knows? Maybe because he is a stranger. You think that the Mother may help him?” Darn suddenly understood his son’s worries. “After Vlad honors the bond with Malva, you can challenge him. Win five challenges in a row, and his bond will shatter.”
“He killed a bear with just a knife,” Rand said, his voice oscillating between worry and bitterness. There was also a touch of fear, even though the challenges were not to the death. Weapons were not involved in the fights and Vlahins did not kill Vlahins. They were peaceful people.
“I don’t know how Vlad killed that bear, but he is weak. I felt it when I shook his hand. He is not a real hunter, and you will win the challenges. I trust you.” Darn patted his son on the shoulder. “You are only eighteen, but you are already one of our strongest fighters.”
Rand looked, startled, at his father, in search of an explanation. The Vlahins named their men hunters, and ranked them based on their ability to provide for the clan. Young Vlahin men wrestled, but ranking them as fighters was a Kalach thing. The Kalach trained their best men as warriors or fighters, to invade other people’s lands. They were trained to kill people, not animals.
“The Kalach have some things right,” Darn said with a smile. “Men lead them, not some women who don’t know how to hunt or fight for the clan. A day may come when men will be in charge here. We were born to lead, not those weak women. Did you see how subservient, and ready to please their mates, the Kalach women are? That’s the right way.”
Rand enjoyed some of his father’s thoughts, but he also feared the power of the Shamane. She was in touch with the Mother. One day, almost four years ago, Moira warned him to stay away from water, for a while. With the bravado of a youngster who thought that the world belonged to him, he dismissed her warning, and went to swim, in the lake close to their village, with the other children of his age. A small landslide created a strong wave, and he was almost drowned. Undecided, he simply nodded at Darn, unwilling to speak about such a sensitive subject; yet he envied the Kalach men for leading their clan. “Did you meet the Kalachs, yesterday?” His father had been away for two days, and when they met in the morning, there was no way to speak to him about this with so many people around them. Apart from Darn’s brother and Rand, no other Vlahin was aware of these meetings with the Kalachs.
“No,” Darn said, his voice filled with displeasure. “They came to our side of the river. I saw them, and waited for them at the right place. They were heading there too then, all of a sudden, they started to run away.”
“Chased by other Vlahins?”
“No, this is our land; no other Vlahins would come without asking for approval. The Kalachs were chasing something I could not see, but I don’t know what could be so important.”
“Maybe it was Vlad they wanted.”
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter. We will meet again in a few weeks. Maduk is man I trust, though I prefer the other one, Turgil. He seems stronger and more determined to help us, and he wants Selma as his mate. Their Shaman favors Turgil too. One day, I will help Turgil kidnap her. If Selma is gone, Malva remains our only shamane apprentice, and her mate will become the Chief of the clan. Ready yourself for the challenges.” Darn stared at his son and still saw some clouds behind his eyes. “If you fail to win the challenges, we will kill Vlad. He is a stranger, not one of us.”
“He has the bond, what will people think? Or the Shamane?”
“Vlad is a stranger. Our laws don’t apply to him. I don’t care about that shrew of woman, and don’t be stupid; we will not kill him in plain view. He will have an accident during a hunt. Don’t worry, son, everything will be fine and, when the time comes, you will be the Chief of the clan. I will take care of that, and the Kalachs will help me.” He patted Rand’s shoulder. “Keep this from your mother and brothers; they may not understand it.”
“Vlad saved my little brother,” Rand said, to channel things away from killing. It was not the Vlahin way, and for all his father’s evil influence, he was not yet fully corrupted.
“Son.” Darn placed his hand on Rand’s shoulder. “Sometimes you need to make tough decisions in life. I would prefer that you shatter the bond between Malva and Vlad, but if the need arises, I will not hesitate to kill him. Soon, we will move, with the Kalachs, against Moira. The bitch should be cast away from the village together with her cripple, and men of valor will lead our clan.” The bitch will be killed, but you are so soft, son. You are still young. In three or four years, I will make you a good Chief, and Malva will learn to obey you.
“What’s that?” Moira pointed at the strange object sitting on the table in front of Vlad.
“Notebook,” Malva said. “It’s used to store images and ... words.”
Moira closed her eyes for a moment. “You can draw things on certain surfaces, but how can you store words?”
Without understanding their conversation, Vlad knew from the women’s gestures that his notebook was its subject, and he opened it at the page were the head of a woman was drawn. Slowly, he pushed it in front of Moira, who was seated between Edna and Rune on the bench across the table. He was sandwiched between Malva and Selma. The adult Vlahins reacted the same way as their children did before: they admired the drawing, then gently touched the paper and smelled it. The scent of the paper and the glue used to stick the pages together was strong for their fine sense of smell, and unfamiliar too.
“What about storing the words?” Moira asked.
Malva stretched out her hand to take the notebook, and opened it at one of the pages where Vlad had written the mini dictionary of the Vlahin language. Not knowing how to explain what she wanted, she tapped over a word, then pushed the notes to him.
I understand what they want, but how can I explain it? Vlad thought, rubbing his chin. After a minute of silence, he reached into his pocket to extract the pencil. He opened the notebook at a blank page, near the end. MOIRA, he wrote in capital letters. “Moira,” he said pointing at the woman. “Moira,” he said again, tapping over the word with his pencil. “M.” He tapped over the letter. “O” He tapped again and continued until he’d read out the name. “M. O. I. R. A. Five letters.” He raised his left hand, fingers stretched, and counted them.
“I think that he associates a sign to each sound in your name,” Edna said, looking at Moira.
“Then he must have a sign for each sound in our language. How many are there? I never thought about that.”
“May I?” Edna asked, pointing at both notes and pencil, and Vlad nodded, though he did not understand the words. She struggled to handle the pencil, then wrote an ‘M’ which was distorted, but intelligible. ‘A’ followed, and then she pushed the notes to Vlad. “Malva,” she said, pointing at the girl, who smiled shyly. “We need an ‘L’. L,” she repeated, and waited until Vlad wrote the letter. “V,” she said again, and Vlad wrote again. She took the notebook and the pencil and wrote the last letter: A. “Malva,” she said, and imitating Vlad, she tapped over the word with the pencil.
“Malva,” Vlad said too, wondering how they understood such an abstract thing as writing so quickly. They are not savages. Why are they so different from the ones who killed...? Or maybe they are not so different in how they think of other people’s lives.
Something resurfaced in his mind: a discussion with uncle Geo, in his other life. He tried to remember what had triggered that discussion, but the reason stayed hidden.
“We are less intelligent than our Stone Age ancestors,” his uncle, who was a world class anthropologist, said. “Our intelligence level peaked around six thousand years ago. Society continued to evolve, and we discovered many things.”
“IQ has risen continuously,” Vlad countered.
“Our measurements are flawed. We analyze the acquired level of knowledge more than the level of intelligence. Take a savage who doesn’t know how to read and write. He will fail any of our tests, obviously. But, what if instead of logical or geometrical associations we try to measure his intelligence by using a natural situation. Something like: there are five trees and a lion in the position marked with A. You are at B. Find a way to escape. This kind of problem requires more parameters to analyze than a comparison between two geometrical figures. Time means a different thing too, it becomes part of the solution. In nature, if you don’t solve the problem in time, you will never encounter another one. The lion will not allow it. Now, if you fail an examination, you still have the chance to try again and again. Even our motivations are different. With agriculture, the survival of the fittest no longer played the same role as before, and we lost both physical and intellectual capacities. The food chain played a role too; grains and milk products introduced a new level of inflammation in our bodies and that influenced the brain too. Some new things and their noxious byproducts in the body were able to pass the blood-brain barrier. It’s not that we became stupid, and the development of society compensated for our loss. We are still producing marvelous things and concepts.” He stared at Vlad, who was not convinced. “Let me show you a movie.” He searched in his computer, and started a movie with a chimpanzee who was able to memorize a sequence of nine numbers in the range from 0 to 9 – a human operator was pressing the buttons at normal speed in a certain order in front of the chimpanzee – to open a safe containing a banana. There were five tests, and the animal passed all of them, opening the safe. “I tried myself,” Geo said with a smile. “I was never able to reproduce more than six numbers, and my best student was able to remember only seven correct numbers. And that level of performance did not happen in all our tests. The chimp’s attention and memory are superior to ours, and that specimen was not even a wild animal, he was born in a lab. One more example: in nature, the chimps are good hunters too. They have a better ratio of success than lions, which are well-known predators. It’s the chimp’s mind and capacity for planning which makes the difference. Our ancestors were far superior to the chimps; if not, we would be the subjects in the lab, and they the researchers.”
Vlad was still not fully convinced, but did not want to upset his uncle. I have to try it myself, he thought.
“Come tomorrow to university. I will enjoy using you as my special guinea pig.” Geo smiled, understanding what was now in Vlad’s mind. All his students had a hard time believing that a chimp was better at performing a task requiring memory and attention. It was about two aspects of intelligence, after all.
In his first test, Vlad was able to memorize only five numbers. On the seventh, he memorized eight. Driven by stubbornness, he tried again and again, but he never improved on eight numbers.
“Time to stop,” Geo said, and patted his shoulder, after twentytests. “You fared better than any of my students, but you learned music from when you were only six years old. You have a better memory. All musicians have. But you luck motivation,” he laughed. “You don’t like bananas as much as the chimp does.”
Vlad’s mind returned to the present, and he wracked his brain, trying to say something that could be understood. He failed. Around him, the Vlahins had the same issue, and a long moment of silence fell between them.
“Girls,” Moira finally said. “His mind is different, but you are bonded to Vlad. You have already realized that. I don’t know how it happened and why it happened so fast, but one of you will become his mate. Only the Mother knows which one, and it may take a year or two until you will make the right decision. Take care of him; teach him our language and,” she raised her forefinger, “learn from him. His tribe is more developed than us or the Kalachs, in ways that we may not even be able to understand. Knowledge is power, and it will help us survive these troubled times. In a few years, the Kalachs will again try to destroy our village and take our lands. And women.” She glanced at the girls, followed by Vlad’s anxious stare, and they both nodded. Moira did not tell them about the Trance Dream she and Edna had had just a few days ago. It was too early; they needed to wait for the second man to appear, the one who was more powerful than Vlad and ready to become a shaman. “Now, let’s eat. I am hungry.”
The Vlahins had two classes of people able to navigate through the five Rivers of Thought and contact the Mother: the women were shamanes, and the men were shamans. There were few differences in the powers they possessed. Unfortunately for their society, the last shaman had died more than fifty years ago, and their disappearance was a mystery for most of the Vlahins. Only the twenty shamanes from the Amber Stone Ring knew that the shamans were killed because of a prophecy given to the Grand Shamane, almost two hundred years ago.
Malva and Selma turned toward Vlad, and rubbed his belly. “Flam?” they asked in one voice, bursting into laughter.
“Flam.” Vlad laughed too, then wrote the word for hungry in his dictionary.
The hut belonging to Moira and Rune was the largest in the village, and even had two small rooms for guests, attached to the sides of the main room, which was a rectangular construction havingwalls made of wattle and plastered with red loam. A long time ago, the Vlahins had learned from the local swallows how to use loam to make better plaster. The intelligent birds were using it to harden their nests. The guests rooms were wicker work, built of osier and reed, and were separate from the main hut. They were small, only eight feet long and five feet wide, and had their own entrances, but no doors. At dusk, Rune fixed a large skin in the upper frame with two small ropes. He pointed, satisfied, at his work, and said the word for door. Vlad memorized it, but for him, the skin, covering only two-thirds of the entrance, could hardly be called a door, but he thanked Rune, who seemed happy, hearing the right Vlahin word for such an occasion.
Before entering, Vlad glanced up: an almost full moon lit the world from above. He saw it without acknowledging its existence. The shadows were lengthening with the twilight, and they stretched inside his mind. He shivered without knowing why. It was not from the cold. Sensing his hesitation, the girls pushed Vlad inside the room, and they pointed toward the bed, also made of osier. His bed was already prepared; they had cut some dry grass from the mountain slope behind the village. The fur of a large bear was used as linen.
