The Chieftain never made up his mind to have the hunt, however, and he died peacefully one night still considering the matter. There were three possible candidates for the Chieftain’s Chair, and there was the mandatory Year-Without-A-Leader to come, during which the candidates would be considered. One was a warrior so great that his like had not been known for generations, one who had taken the heads of enemies before he was twenty, Killed-The-Great-Beast at the age of fifteen, who had brought the Chieftain the shields and cattle of countless successful raids upon neighbouring peoples. One was the younger brother of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried, a man of great skill in the making of things, whose arrows were straighter than those made by others, whose shields and fetishes glowed with life and spirit, whose boats skimmed the water with a life and will of their own. The third candidate was the son of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried, that is, the only son who was left. All the others had so demonstrated their courage and competed in dangerous games of skill that they had come to early and lamented ends. The surviving son had been begotten by the Chieftain in the Chieftain’s eightieth year and had been named ‘Son of my Strength,’ that is, ‘Thewson.’ He was tall enough and well built enough that the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried need have had no shame about him, but he was young and callow enough that none of the members of the Council of Elders considered him seriously as a candidate for the Chair of Chieftains once the Year-Without-A-Leader was past.
Why Thewson should have supposed himself a true contender for the Chair was not generally understood. It may have been that he had been weaned on the vaunting ambition of his mother, who had little enough pleasure in life and wished to believe that she might be remembered as a Womb-of-Chieftains though no female could be given that title until after her death. It may have been simply that he lived in dreams, that the violent endings to which all his brothers had come might have seemed ordained in order that Thewson might rise as they fell. Whatever the reason, when he learned that the Council did not consider him a true contender, he raged silently in his hide tent for some days. He was not a stupid young man. He knew that he could not challenge either the warrior or the craftsman. He went, therefore, to the house of the shaman and begged the shaman to tell him of the history of the Chair of Chieftains and of those who had occupied the Chair over the years and of how they had come there.
The shaman sat crouched over his fire, fingering the bones of fortune, casting herbs into the fire and inhaling the pungent smoke, muttering occasionally as he chanted the stories of thirty generations of Chieftains. All of the histories were taught by shaman to pupil – there was no writing. Thewson found that his memory was as quick and accurate as the strike of a great viper. He had only to hear the histories once to remember them.
Time on time, it was sung, once every ten generations or so, the Chieftain of the People came to power through the Crown of Wisdom. Thewson brewed a large pot of beer, strained it and flavoured it with berries to pour it generously for the shaman. Tell me, Old and Wise, what is the Crown of Wisdom?’ The shaman muttered and rolled his watery eyes, bleared from one hundred years of smoky fires.
‘In the sacred place,’ he chanted, ‘where the river Wal Thai spills from the high lake over the great cliffs, where the coloured ribbon of the light of Ulum Auwa spins across the great gulf, where there is speaking thunder of waters, there is the cavern of the Knowledge of All Things. There in that cavern is the image of Ulum Auwa, carved from the Rock That Lives, and on the carven head of He Auwamol was the Crown of Wisdom. It was to this place that the Killers of Great Beasts came, and it was to this place that they set themselves to pass the great gulf and the speaking thunder and to climb die Wall Which Cannot Be Climbed to come to the Cavern of Ulum Auwa.’
There was much detail. All of the Killers of the Great Beast failed to reach the cavern, all but one. That one was Chieftain-Climbs-The-Wall who was the many times great-grandfather of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried. Chieftain-Climbs-The-Wall had returned to the Lion Courts with the Crown.
‘What happened to the Crown? asked Thewson, softly, as he poured more beer.
‘In the days that the Chieftain-Climbs-The-Wall became the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried and lay in his bones in his house, there came a stranger with many strangers in a great boat to the place of Crossing the Waters, where Wal Thal flows into the sea. There was much fighting and much glory with the stranger, and he went away scatheless though he and many of the other strangers left their weapons and their armour and many wet the earth with their blood and many left their bones as well. And when the stranger had gone, it was found that the Crown of Wisdom was gone as well, for there had been fighting in the place where that Chieftain lay in his bones. No Chieftain since that time has had the crown, and it is said that the Cavern of Ulum Auwa is empty of it.’
‘Is it sung that the stranger took it?’
‘It is sung that when the stranger went, the crown went, though whether Auwamol stretched out his hand to
