The Wolf Gift Page 0,179

before my eyes.

"They became a pack of howling, snarling dogs. I had never seen such a thing. They overwhelmed the enemy, driving the attackers into the ocean, devouring them, even demolishing their boats with their teeth and their claws, stalking every fugitive and consuming every morsel of enemy flesh.

"Then they reverted back to who they were before - apelike, peaceful, simple. They told me not to fear. They knew the enemy by his evil scent. They caught it on the wind before the boats ever appeared. They would never do such things as I had seen except to an enemy. It was the power given them by the gods long ago to defend themselves against others so evil that they would break the peace of their world for no reason at all.

"I lived with them for two years. I wanted that power. As I said, I drank their urine, their blood, their tears, whatever they would give to me. I didn,t care. I slept with their women. I took the semen of their men. I bought their precious secretions and their blood with bits of wisdom, cunning advice, clever little inventions of which they,d never dreamed, solutions to problems they couldn,t solve.

"Now there was one other case, an obvious one, for which the change could be induced: to punish a lawbreaker, usually a homicide - the most despised traitor to the peace.

"Again, they knew the criminal by his scent, and they,d surround him, dancing themselves into a frenzy until the change was fully upon them and they would devour the guilty man. To the best of my knowledge, they were never wrong in their judgment, and I saw more than one accused outlaw vindicated. They never abused the power at all. It seemed relatively simple to them. They could not shed innocent blood; their gods had given them the power only to eradicate evil, and they had no doubts on the matter, and they thought it very amusing that I should want the power or think that I could induce it in myself.

"Yet whenever the change was upon them, I did whatever I could to elicit small bites from them, which they thought was powerfully funny and a little indecent, but they were in awe of me, so they gave in."

He closed his eyes for a moment and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, then opened his eyes again and stared forward as though lost.

"Were they mortal?" Laura asked. "Could they die?"

"Yes, indeed, they were mortal," said Margon. "They were. They died all the time from simple things which my palace physicians could have easily cured. An abscessed tooth that could have been pulled, a broken leg improperly set and then infected. Yes, they were mortal. And they held me to be the most magical of persons because I could cure certain ailments and certain injuries, and that gave me great power in their eyes."

He paused again.

Thibault, who had teasingly complained earlier of not wanting to hear Margon was listening now, fascinated, as if he,d never heard this part of Margon,s story before.

"Why did they turn on you?" he asked. "You,ve never said."

"Oh same old story," said Margon. "I,d learned enough of their rudimentary language after two years to tell them I did not believe in their gods. Remember I was very young at the time, perhaps three years older than Stuart is now. I wanted the power. The power did not come from the gods. I thought I should say so. In those days, I always told the truth." He laughed under his breath. "Understand, theirs was no complex religion like that of the cities of fertile plains. It was no great system of temples and taxes and bloody altars. But they had their gods. And I thought I should tell them, as a matter of fact, that there were no gods at all.

"Now they had always been kind to me, and loved to learn the clever things that I could teach. They,d laughed at me for wanting their power, as I said, or more truly for thinking that I could acquire it. You cannot get what the gods will not give, they said. And the gods had given the power to them, not to others - like me.

"But now, when they came to understand the full extent of my denial of their gods, and the full heretical dimension of my insistence that I could acquire the power, they pronounced me a lawbreaker of the worst

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