Dave Smeds: The Sorcery Within

"You've taken my ancestors," Toren whispered. He listened in the places of his mind where the familiar voices should be and found silence. The remembrances of past generations, which had seemed so much like his own memories, would no longer come to consciousness. He stared forlornly as Ivayer picked up the bracelet.

"We are sorry it has to be this way," Geim said. "If you had lived in the civilized lands, we might have offered you gold or iron. But we had nothing you value enough to make you leave the Wood, until now."

"You have made me acheli. It would have been more merciful to kill me."

"The process can be reversed. Your ancestors can be returned to you."

Toren looked up, startled and suspicious. "After I've killed your dragon for you?"

"Before," Geim said. "All we ask is that you come with us to Serthe, and speak to Struth. She'll give your totem back to you. In fact, she's the only one who can. It's easy to put it in the gem, but only a god has sufficient magic to restore it to your body."

Toren stared at his feet. Ivayer spoke.

"Perhaps we should put it another way," Geim translated. Ivayer gestured to Deena, who untied the ropes. Toren winced as a rush of blood returned to his extremities. Ivayer held out the bracelet.

"Take it, return to your shaman. See if he can free your ancestors," Geim said.

"They would cast me out if they knew I had let foreigners defile my totem." Even his son would be compelled to shun him.

"Then it seems to me your choices are suicide, or coming with us, letting Struth restore you, and in time being able to return as a complete man."

Toren found it difficult to care what his alternatives were. That morning he had been a modhiv, one of the best scouts his tribe had. Now he was not even a true Fhali. He could no longer call up the memory of the founder planting the tribe's home tree, only his own meager recollections of the tree at its present, mighty girth. When he rose, it was almost as if someone else moved his muscles.

Geim seemed to smile. "This is not funny," Toren snapped.

"No," Geim answered quickly. "I was merely thinking of something that Struth said. She assured us that you would be a person with a well-developed sense of self-preservation."

Toren glowered. When Ivayer offered him the bracelet again, he waved it away. He would walk north for now. There did not seem to be any alternative. But that did not mean he had to stop behaving like a modhiv. When they set out, he was in the lead, as if he were the master, not the slave.