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I believe are due to poorly understood diseases. Or maybe just due to getting
old.
Murgen was startled by Suvrin's outburst. Which seemed excessive to me, too.
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"Not a skinwalker in the way you mean," Murgen said.
Was there something in Suvrin's background?
The concept of a monster able to steal someone else's identity that way is
particularly grotesque. I have seen a lot of strange and ugly things. Tobo's
hidden folk are only the latest on a long list. But Skinwalkers are one horror
that just seems too terrible to be true.
Like the gods themselves of late there have been no manifestations before
reliable witnesses. We were talking ancient legends tonight. Suvrin had
referenced one of the most obscure.
I said, "Believe me, Suvrin, if there were any real skinwalkers down your way
you can bet the Shadowmasters would've rooted them out and used them up. What
a weapon, eh?"
"I guess," Suvrin admitted. Reluctantly.
"That's wonderful," Sleepy grumped. "Ghost-story time is over, boys. Now we
let Murgen finish. He is going to finish, isn't he? Because I want to get back
to what this meeting is supposed to be all about." She swung a deadly finger.
"Don't you even think about puking up another wisecrack, Willow."
Swan grimaced. He had live ammunition and no ready target. Then he grinned. A
time would come.
I said, "Murgen?"
"There isn't much more. Baladitya says most of the high points of the
mythology agree. There's more of a death goddess to her nature over there.
She's always referenced as living in a cemetery."
"She does that here, doesn't she?" I asked. "When Sleepy and Lady and you,
especially, talk about your nightmares, that place you go with all the bones?
That could be a Gunni style cemetery."
The Gunni burn their dead to purify them before their souls line up for
reassignment in the next life. But the fires are never hot enough to consume
the major bones. If a burning ground is near a major river the leftovers are
generally deposited there. But a lot of places are not near a major river. And
some are not near a source of firewood. And some families never save up enough
to buy wood that is available.
Bones pile up.
These places are not often seen by anyone but the priests who attend them, the
men in yellow who revere Majayama but watch over their shoulders because Kina
and her pack of pet demons supposedly lived beneath the bone piles. Even
though Kina is known to be chained up under the glittering plain until the
Year of the Skulls.
I said, "I've got a lot of time to think these days. One of the things I've
been pondering is why there are so many different stories about Kina. And I
think I've figured it out."
My ego got a boost. Even Sleepy seemed interested, despite herself. My wife,
perhaps less enthralled, suggested, "Do go on," in a tone implying that she
knew there would be no stopping me anyway.
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"In those days the Company... "
"Croaker!"
"Sorry. Just seeing if you were listening. What clued me was the fact that
there isn't any uniform Gunni doctrine. There isn't much of an hierarchy
amongst Gunni priests, either, except locally. There's no central arbiter of
what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable dogma. Kina isn't alone in being
the subject of a hundred conflicting myths. The whole pantheon is. Pick any
god you want. When you travel from village to village you'll find him wearing
different names, different myths, getting mixed up with other gods, and on and
on and on. We see the confusion because we're travelers. But up until the
Shadowmaster wars almost nobody in these parts ever went anywhere. Generation
after generation, century after century, people were born, lived and died in
the same few square miles. You only had a few gem traders and the Strangler
bands moving around. Ideas didn't travel with them. So every myth gradually
mutates according to local experience and prejudice. Now first the
Shadowmasters and then we land in the middle of all this... "
We? A glance around showed me just three other people who had not grown up in
this end of the world. For a moment I felt ancient and out of place and found
myself recalling an old piece of poetry that said something to the effect:
"Soldiers live. And wonder why." Meaning, why am I the one, of all those who
marched with the Company when I was young, who is still alive and kicking? I
do not deserve it any more than any of those men. Maybe less than some.
You always feel a little guilty when you think about it. And a little glad it
was somebody else, not you.
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