Through Wolf's Eyes (32 page)

"That is the best point in favor of this match," Aurella agreed. "Then you wish me to speak with your father?"

Elise swallowed, met her mother's gaze, and was
overwhelmed by the realization that for the first time she was being
spoken to woman to woman, not as a daughter by a mother.

"Yes, ma'am, I do," she said.

Aurella nodded. "Tonight, then, after the banquet."

In a single, swift, graceful movement, Lady Aurella
rose, leaving her fancy work behind her on the chair. She was gone
before Elise rose from her dutiful curtsy, but not before Elise saw the
single tear glittering like dew on her rose-petal cheek.

H
ANDLESS, FOOTLESS
,
armless, kneeless, unmoving, unbound. She drifts. Eagle-winged, free to
ride air as warm and firm as Blind Seer's fur. Suddenly bound. Unable
to move even within human limitations. Time spiralling into memory's
clouds.

Smaller, shorter, weaker, afraid, alone, lost.
Cold and hungry, the raw meat the wolf has dropped before her as
inedible as a rock would have been. The little girl cries and her tears
wet against her face are the only thing warm about her. Trembles,
coughs, lungs protesting air's intrusion. Wishing she was gone where
the others are gone. Shrill whining in her ears, keening of the wolves
who have taken her to themselves only to watch her shrivel and fade
like autumn leaves under winter's blast.

Dying. That's what she's doing! Dying. The
realization comes as a faint surprise, rather like learning that it is
her birthday: an abstract thing, anticipated but not understood. Dying.
How very odd.

Little people die. She'd seen that during the
first days when they'd come with Prince Barden into the wild woods.
Jeri Punkinhair had died of a cough that wouldn't go away, no matter
how warmly his parents wrapped him, no matter how dutifully he'd choked
down brews of honey and tree bark, hot broth, stewed herbs. Little
people die, twisting and bending like seedlings that never quite get a
start on growing. Now she is dying. She wonders why if this was to come
she hadn't been burned in the fire. This new dying seems a dreadful waste of effort.

Lying on the cold stone floor, coughing from her
smoke-seared lungs, weeping until there are no more tears, breathing
until there is no more air. Around her, wailing like the mournful moans
of the winter wind around the cabin chimney, she hears howling as the
wolves voice their despair. Little person, pale flame, soon just so
much meat.

She is fading, doesn't even flinch when one arm,
then the other is grasped between fanged jaws. Pain can't seem to get
through the dying. Astonishment, maybe, just a touch, feeling that the
breath of the wolves is warm.

The wolves drag her through the autumn woods, big
moon heavy and orange watching from the horizon. Her feet trail behind
her, legs as limp as those of the rag doll Blysse carried with her
nearly everywhere. She gave it a new name each week, usually the name
of some wonderful heroine from the Old Country stories Sweet Eirene
told around the fire each night.

Is she become a rag doll? Are the wolves become
children? It seems quite possible, there on the twilight fringes of
dying. With some faint spark of herself, the little girl holds on to
the idea. Even a rag doll has more life than does a dying child.

The moon stops moving in the sky. Then she
realizes that the wolves have lowered her to the ground, released her
arms. She feels a flicker of regret for the loss of their hot breath.
Her own breath is cold and thick, full of slime. The effort to draw in
air is not worth the pain. She stops.

Relief is temporary. Something presses against
her mouth, forces her to draw in air. She struggles but a heavy and
furry weight pins her legs. Eventually, she loses all sensation except
for the searing ache of her lungs being forced to draw in breath.

Upon waking she discovers herself bathed in warm
mist. Rough hands, coarse but not unkind, rock her gently. Silence
wraps her but for a faint hiss of steam and a terrible hacking that she
realizes is her own coughing. Distantly, she feels each curving rib
fragile as a twig, bending beneath the racking
coughs. The sensation is sufficiently distant that she can dismiss it as unconnected to her relative comfort.

Timelessness passes. Vaguely she knows snowfall
and blizzard wind. More immediate is warmth, the caress of those coarse
hands. Sometimes voices.

She cannot be permitted to die. We will need her.

Someday someone must speak our talks. Cross between worlds. Separation forever is impossible.

Nearly dead. If she comes back, she will be strong enough to venture into life.

Purpose. And we will teach her, though
never will she know our presence. You will be good parents to her, but
she is too weak to survive without other aid.

A long journey, this one. Moons will die and be born before it ends.

Awakening into spring. Pale hazes green and
yellow on the branches. Scent of blossoms in the warm air. Birdsong and
joyful plashing of running water. Running outside on trembling legs,
just barely firm enough to bear her weight. Falling. Tumbling against a
furry flank that cushions her descent. Strawberries and fish. Warm
blood drunk from a rabbit's throat. Crunching stems of watercress. Hot
liver.

She has always been a wolf.

T
HE ANNOUNCEMENT
that Lady Elise Archer was to be formally betrothed to Jet Shield was
met with excitement and glee by most, a delightful new twist in the
engaging entertainment surrounding the selection of an heir by the
king. In tavern and shop, market stall and street corner, the
townspeople gathered to gossip about this new development. The
politically savvy gladly explained to their slower comrades how this
gambit would enhance the chances of either Elise or Jet (or one of
their fathers) being chosen as King Tedric's heir.

In the manses and suites occupied by the potential
heirs of King Tedric, the news was greeted more soberly. Grand Duke
Gadman consulted with his son, Lord Rolfston, and daughter-in-law, Lady
Melina, about how best to exploit this new twist without completely
invalidating Sapphire's claim— should King Tedric not choose to travel
down the road that Jet and Elise had made so inviting for him.

G
ADMAN'S SISTER
,
Grand Duchess Rosene, sat alone in her private rooms, denying audience
to both her son, Ivon, and her daughter, Zorana, steeling herself for
the unpleasant but seemingly necessary task of favoring one of her
children over the other.

It had not been maternal love but expediency that had
kept her from doing so for this long. As long as King Tedric showed no
clear favorites, her case was stronger for having two potential
candidates in her line. Now Ivon, through Elise, had made a clever
play. She hoped that prospect of having Lieutenant Purcel Trueheart
succeed in time to the Archer Barony would soothe Zorana.

E
ARL
K
ESTREL TOOK
the news from Valet with the same calm with which Valet presented it.
Privately, Norvin Norwood admitted to himself that this plan was a
cunning one—one that anticipated a move he had been prepared to make if
King Tedric did not acknowledge Blysse his heir. Delay had seemed wise
since Tedric had seemed interested in the girl.

Now Norvin Norwood wondered if he had waited too
long. In passing, he felt a sudden gladness that his own four children
stood between his adopted daughter and the Kestrel duchy. It said
something about his own nature that he was unaware of the irony in this
thought.

S
APPHIRE
S
HIELD, SUDDENLY
ousted from a position she had viewed as favored, locked herself in her room in the
castle.
In the hours since her too well informed maid brought her the rumor of
Elise's engagement to Jet along with the breakfast tray, Sapphire's
mood had shifted from disbelief, to spiteful anger at this betrayal by
both parents and brother, to full-blown rage.

Even the trepidation Sapphire had felt when Earl
Kestrel had unveiled Prince Barden's presumptive daughter was nothing
to this. She dreaded herself discarded, had nearly invaded King
Tedric's private rooms to beg him not to forget her claims, put aside
that plan as childish, flung herself onto her bed screaming into her
pillow and kicking her feet against the feather padding.

Outside the stone walls of the room no one could hear
her, but inside the room her maid stood pale and trembling, watching
the fit and fearing that her mistress's wrath would be turned against
her.

I
N YET ANOTHER ROOM
there was fury so great as to diminish Sapphire's into nothing by
contrast. Lady Zorana Archer tasted the bitterness of certain defeat.
There had been times that she had almost felt the crown upon her brow,
heard herself proclaimed Queen Zorana the Second. Rolfston's chances
had never been as good as he had believed. King Tedric despised him as
a crawling worm just like his father, Gadman. Melina Shield ran that
family and no one in Hawk Haven would accept a witch as queen.

Ivon was a good enough man, but he had only one heir.
Privately, Grand Duchess Rosene had admitted to her daughter that Ivon
lacked true regal fire—unlike Zorana, who had been named for Hawk
Haven's first and greatest ruler and had modeled herself after her
achievements. Since Princess Lovella's death Zorana had even imagined
that her ancestress favored her, was guiding her fortunes from the
world beyond. This latest announcement—and her mother's refusal to meet
with her—was a betrayal not only of Zorana's hopes but of her private
mythology.

Zorana was alone in her chambers when a knock came on her door. Since she had dismissed even her maid, she must
answer
it herself. Smoothing her hair—though not a bit was out of place, her
rages being internal rather than external— Zorana opened it. Prince
Newell Shield stood without.

"May I beg admittance, Lady Zorana?"

She opened the door wider in reply. The corridor
without was empty. When she sent Aksel away an hour before he must have
given orders that she was to be left undisturbed until she herself
summoned companionship. Aksel, for all his weakness, had moments of
wisdom. He knew that Zorana was not one to lock herself away while
secretly craving that others seek her out. Newell, though, Newell she
found strangely welcome.

They had been playmates once upon a time, he Lord
Newell, son of the duke of House Gyrfalcon, a third son, unlikely to
ever be the heir. She had been even lesser ranked, a noblewoman, yes,
but not even heiress to her lesser house. When her niece Elise had been
born, Zorana became merely Lady Zorana, third in line for the Barony,
her title a courtesy she could not pass on to her children. Ambition to
be more had germinated then, an ambition unlikely to be achieved
through politics but attainable through other avenues.

Some three years or so after Newell Shield had
married Princess Lovella there were rumors among the women that there
were times the princess, unwilling to trust only in potions and
herbals, banned her husband from her bed. At that time, Zorana herself
was betrothed to Aksel Trueheart, a marriage arranged for the
satisfaction of their houses, not from any affection. Some almost
formal pawing in dark corners had awakened in Zorana the terror that
she would never feel passion. Then she had seen Newell's gaze upon her,
a pale thing that wrapped her like spider's silk: soft and insidiously
strong.

They had become lovers during those moon-spans before
her wedding, and Zorana had discovered that she was indeed capable of
passion. But Newell had turned from her after her wedding, saying he
could not risk fathering another man's heir. Zorana had wondered if the
loss of Newell had not been what made her coupling with Aksel so
fierce. Certainly Purcel
was conceived within a few moon-spans and born slightly before his parents' first anniversary.

Newell had never returned to Zorana's bed, though
after a while they had eventually become something like friends. By the
time Deste was born, Zorana was feeling some satisfaction from
mothering a dynasty that might earn the honors that had been stolen
from her.

On this day, though, Zorana forgot what honors young
Purcel had already earned, what promise the younger three showed. In
the loss of a crown she had dreamed upon her brow, these achievements
were ashes. And in this moment of despair, Newell returned to her.

"I thought," he said, crossing to a chair and sitting
uninvited, "that you might want some friendly company, company from
someone outside of this mess."