Free The Shaman by Christopher Stasheff

may
be necessary to take one out here and there—perhaps even to kill.”
    Lucoyo
looked up at him with a fox’s grin. “Oh,” he said, “I think I can accept that.”
After all, he really didn’t care who he killed—anyone would do, as long as he
was human—or elfin. He would be just as glad to make Byleo the butt of his
revenge as his own tribesmen.
    No,
his own tribesmen would be better—much better. But any other human being would
be acceptable after that—except, possibly, for these hunters. He would delay
judgment on them.
    Of
course, he would try them first. When they pitched camp an hour or so later,
Lucoyo volunteered to gather kindling, while others set out to hunt. There were
few trees on this side of the river, and they all clustered by the water—the
flow marked the end of Ohaern’s forest country and the beginning of Lucoyo’s
grasslands—but Lucoyo found sticks enough to start a fire, and some thick
enough to keep it going.
    He
also found a stand of curious fanlike plants with cones that he knew well.
    He
brought them all back to the campsite and started laying the fire to roast the
pig the hunters brought back. Then he stacked the larger sticks to the side,
hiding the cones in them.
    “Well
done, Lucoyo!” Dalvan knelt beside him, opening the greenwood box that hung at
his belt and emptying the living coal out into the pile of kindling. Lucoyo
watched with interest and saw the box was lined with clay, hardened and
blackened from the heat. His folk always carried along a smoldering pot, but
when they journeyed from place to place, they went as a clan, not by ones and
twos. He realized he could learn much from these hunters ...
    And
they from him.
    When
the pig was roasted and the carcass taken from the spit, Lucoyo said, “I will
stoke the fire.”
    The
Biriae looked up, agreeably surprised. “Well, thank you, Lucoyo!”
    “None
can say the ha—the stranger does not do his share of the work.”
    “Stranger?
No more! Let us call him ... the archer!”
    Lucoyo
almost felt guilty as he set a few sticks on the fire— with the cones among
them. But he steeled himself with the thought that these Biriae’s goodwill must
be tested—never mind that he wasn’t really acting as a friend should.
    He
went back to his place, gnawing on a bone and listening to the talk. Glabur was
in the middle of a tale about a huge boar and a sharp spear when—
    The
fire exploded.
    Loud
reports rang out, and sticks and flaming coals flew everywhere. Dalvan shouted
with pain and brushed a burning stick from him as he jumped up. The others were
already on their feet, yards away from the fire and still moving, calling to
one another, “What was it?”
    “A
spirit!”
    “The
wrath of Ulahane!”
    “A
fire demon!”
    Ohaern
was as surprised as any of them, but as he leaped back, his hand was on his
dagger, his left up to guard, and the expression on his face neither angry nor
frightened, but only very alert. While the others looked at the fire, he looked
at the trees around, then at them, and noticed that Lucoyo was silent, though
moving just as fast as any of the band. He caught the halfling’s eye, and
Lucoyo’s face went blank with innocence.
    Ohaern
laughed.
    The
other Biriae looked up at Ohaern in surprise, then followed his gaze to Lucoyo,
then looked at one another with sheepish grins as they all began to laugh, too.
“It was a famous joke,” Glabur told Lucoyo, “or will be. What was it? Resinous
wood? But here there are no pines.”
    “No,”
Lucoyo admitted. “Cones.”
    “Cones?”
Glabur stared in surprise. “What kind of cone makes a noise like that?”
    “We
call it ‘the podium,’ “ Lucoyo told them. “It is a low branching plant with a
few cones at the top. Crickets sit on them to play their tunes, looking like
chieftains standing up high to address their people.”
    “
‘Lucoyo’s podium’ it shall be to us from this day forth,” Ohaern averred.
    “You
will have to show it to us