Stuart nodded.
"Well, I thought it was over as I said. The simple apelike creatures could never mount a defense against such a sophisticated and vicious invader. There was no time for me to teach them how to protect themselves.
"Well, I was wrong.
" ,You go and hide,, they said to me. ,We will know when their boats are coming., Then dancing wildly in circles as the shore people landed, they brought on the transformation. The elongated limbs, the fangs, the abundant wolfen hair - all you,ve seen yourselves, all you boys have experienced for yourselves. The tribe - male and female alike - were transformed into such monsters right 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 se**n 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 sort, and set a time for me to die.
"Such killing rituals always took place at dusk. Understand, they could easily transform into wolf people in the daytime if an enemy approached; but for executions they always waited until dusk.
"And so as darkness fell, they lighted their torches and formed a great circle, forcing me into the middle of it, and they began to dance to bring about the change.
"It wasn,t easy for them. They were not all a party to it. Some stood back. I had saved the lives of many of them, healed their sick children. I could see it there and then, the great disinclination in these crude beings to harm an innocent. Indeed, I am not sure what scent they caught from me at that time, and I,ll never know.
"But I know what scent I caught from them - a hideous, acrid scent, a scent of malice threatening my very life, when they came down on me like wolves.
"Now if they,d torn me apart as they did the other enemies and lawbreakers, that would have been the end of the story. And my journey through time would have ended like that of any mortal man. But they did not. Something restrained them, some lingering respect or fascination, or distrust of themselves.
"And it is conceivable that from the playful bites I,d extracted, and from the fluids I,d imbibed, I had some great glandular immunity working in me, some powerful fount of healing that allowed me to survive their attack.
"Whatever the case, I suffered bites all over and I crawled on my belly towards the jungle to die. This was the worst torture I,d ever endured. I was angry - enraged that my life was ending in this fashion. And they were dancing back and forth all around me, on either side of me, and behind me. They were shifting back into their regular shape, and cursing me, then struggling into the wolfen form again, because I was not dead. But they could not bring themselves, obviously, to finish me off.
"And then I changed.
"Before their eyes, I changed.