The Jackal of Nar by John Marco Page A

right?”
    Pris nodded. “Yes, Bhapo. Will you bring me back another book when you come?”
    “I will try. But here, let me show you something. You will like this.”
    With Pris and her father watching, Tharn picked up a stick from the ground, a gnarled, dry branch that had fallen from one of the courtyard’s birch trees. Quickly he pulled off the twigs studding it, then began to crack the stick into pieces. Each piece he laid on the ground in turn, until he had formed what looked like a figure, a wooden man with a branch for a torso and tiny sticks for legs and arms.
    “There,” said Tharn. “Do you know what that is?”
    Pris didn’t hide her disappointment. “Nothing,” she said sourly.
    “Not nothing. That is a man.”
    The girl cocked her head inquisitively and studied the stick figure. “It is?”
    “Yes!” Tharn waved his hand over the twigs. “Look.”
    The sticks quivered for a moment, and then the little wooden man stood up, teetered on his blunt feet, and began to move. Pris squealed with delight, clapping her hands. Tharn laughed and looked up at Voris, whose eyes were wide with a sort of horrified fascination. As Pris clapped, the little wooden man began to dance, and soon even the cunning-men, who had slowly been growing accustomed to their master’s bizarre abilities, began to chuckle.
    “Keep clapping, Pris,” directed Tharn. He got up from his knees and headed back to his horse. “He will dance for you a little longer.”
    So enthralled was the girl with her new toy that she hardly noticed her beloved Bhapo leaving. Voris walked past her and helped Tharn onto his horse. His white face still bore a look of utter shock.
    “What was that?” asked the warlord.
    Tharn shrugged. “Ask Lorris,” he replied, then snapped the reins of his horse and rode away. Moments later, when he haddisappeared into the green forest, the little man he had made of sticks stopped dancing and fell broken to the ground.

CHAPTER FIVE
    H is name was Nebarazar Gorandarr, but no one ever called him that. He had a royal pedigree longer than most Naren kings, save for perhaps the emperor himself, and he could trace his bloodline back a thousand generations, to the time when the Triin were gatherers of plants and the first troublesome Drol had yet to worship a mythical god. Because of his lineage and the twistedness of his name, his people had long ago settled on a title for those of his once-powerful clan.
    They called him Daegog.
    It was an ancient word meaning “leader,” and the Daegog of Lucel-Lor took pride in the title. He was not Daegog Nebarazar Gorandarr, he was simply the Daegog. His wife called him thus, as did his dozen children, and to speak his full name while in his presence was to commit the highest heresy. Those who served him did so not out of love, but the deepest, inbred loyalty. His family had been revered throughout Triin history, and though he had been the weakest of his clan, he still commanded honor, at least among those who had not fallen under the spell of the Drol.
    Some thought him petty. He knew this and generally did not mind the insult. He was vastly wealthy, or at least he had been before losing his citadel to Tharn, and he always considered it mere jealousy that those with less should call him mean or tight with his riches. In his mind he had earned every bauble simply by virtue of who he was, the latest descendant of a venerable family.
    Today the Daegog of Lucel-Lor was in a particularly foul mood, and he intended everyone to know it. He drummed his pudgy fingers on the meeting table, so that his stout rings rubbed together. Of all the things the Daegog hated, he despised waiting above all else. In better days, keeping a Daegog waiting wouldhave been a crime. But those days had passed, and even he knew he couldn’t expect the Naren savages to understand such complicated etiquette. So he waited, seething, on pillows of less than quality silk. A serving woman placed a bowl of dates