Brotherhood of the Wolf (60 page)

Years of worry had gnawed at King Anders. Those years had left the flesh hanging slack on Anders's tall, spare frame.

Yet as he lay abed, his eyes staring past the canopy above him, he felt no fear. A deep calm coursed through him, like a refreshing drink of water from a mountain stream. The world was about to change.

Anders stepped out of bed, threw off his robes, and stood naked for a moment. His rooms were in the highest tower of his keep, and the balcony door and windows were all wide open. A cool, titillating breeze breathed through the room, stirring the thin summer curtains.

Anders's wife reached out, pawed at his pillow, as if she sought to find him in her dreams. He brushed back the dark hair from her right temple and whispered, “Sleep.”

Immediately her whole body slackened, and she dropped into a heavy slumber.

A strong gust of wind lashed at the curtains, entered the room and began to circle. Though the wind was invisible, its movements were palpable.

Anders spread his arms wide in welcome, felt the wind encompassing him, brushing under his arms, delicious to the senses.

He let the wind move him, lead him out to the balcony of his keep.

There, gargoyles splotched crimson, yellow, and metallic green with lichens hunched on the merlons and stared down to the courtyard two hundred feet below.

King Anders leapt lightly to the nearest merlon, teetered upon it a moment, then caught his balance.

He stared out at the night sky until—sure enough—he saw three shooting stars streak overhead in rapid succession.

He took it as a sign. He was not sure of its meaning, but he felt comforted by it, just as he felt comforted by the wind gushing around the tower.

Here, so high above the city, the wind was stronger than anywhere below. It moved forcefully, pleasingly, stirring the hair of his body, tightening his nipples. It seethed across the distant plains below, buffeted him and teased him.

The city just outside the castle gates was silent at this time of night. The streets down in the merchant quarter were empty tonight.

Aroused, King Anders began to circle the tower, leaping lightly from merlon to merlon. Some dark corner of his brain knew that he must look mad. If any of his guardsmen were to spot him, or some inhabitant of his realm up late of night, they would have been astonished to see him leaping in the darkness upon the merlons of his tower, braving death with every step.

He did not care.

Sensation had its own logic. He liked risking death at every step. For years he had been consumed by worry, but in the past few months, he'd begun to overcome all fear.

Now he leapt swiftly, running ever faster. For a king with endowments of brawn and grace and metabolism, it was not a particularly dangerous feat.

Yet as he ran, he felt the danger. For often his feet scraped the lichens from the bare stone, so that his footing felt slippery and unsure, or the power in his legs brought him teetering on the edge.

Ah, to plunge! he thought in those moments. Ah, to be surrounded by air!

The urge was strong in him, so strong that King Anders could deny it no longer.

He raced to a merlon, stepped on the hunched back of a gargoyle, and threw himself with all his might from his tower.

He plummeted, his legs still pumping, arms spread wide like an eagle's wings, his eyes half-closed in ecstasy.

And then he recognized his peril.

What of it? he thought. What of death? Even if he died, this taste of Air, this liveliest of breaths, was worth the price.

He looked to the west as he fell. The wind there stirred the fields, heaved toward him.

It rushed over the hills at a hundred miles per hour, perhaps two hundred, and then screamed above the city roofs.

King Anders closed his eyes, prepared to meet doom. His stomach rose into his chest as he fell.

Five feet from the ground, the wind caught him. It swirled around his torso, lifted him. It fondled his hair and his skin.

Anders opened his eyes, grinning fiercely.

He stared into a whirlwind. A veritable tornado was taking shape before him. Yet its base did not shift and writhe. Nor did it roar in its fury, but instead breathed as quietly as a sleeping babe.

Silently it whirled, drawing dust up from the city streets. Near its crest, Anders could see stars through the maelstrom as if they were eyes. The monstrous wind held Anders in its hands, lifted him high overhead.

Over the past months, Anders had dreamed of this possibility, had yearned for it. He'd hoped for it only distantly.

Anders cried aloud, “Well met!,” and he laughed with sheer pleasure.

35
THE FOOD THAT SATISFIES

Averan clawed her way up from her shallow grave. Night lay thick on the village. Her stomach ached for want of food, but something more pernicious assailed her.

As a child of three, when the King decided to make her a skyrider, she'd been granted an endowment of brawn, one of stamina, and one of wit.

She'd always felt strong and tireless, and been able to remember things well. Now, she felt weak in both body and mind. Her thoughts seemed clouded.

I'm a commoner, she realized. Someone killed my Dedicates today.

It must have been horrible. Averan had flown over the Blue Tower on her way to the Courts of Tide many times. The enormous castle sitting out there in the ocean had always seemed so vast, so strong. She couldn't imagine anyone overthrowing it.

But she knew in her heart that someone had taken the Blue Tower, and in the darkness she felt forlorn and desolate, more than ever in her whole life, more even than when she'd had to leave Brand and everyone else at Keep Haberd.

I'm just a girl now, she thought. I'm a commoner, like everyone else. I'll never ride a graak again.

At the age of nine, her life had just ended.

Without her endowments, she imagined that she had no future.

She wanted to lie in the dirt and cry, but remembered something Brand used to say. “Riding a graak isn't easy. If you fall off, the first thing to do is to make sure that no bones are broken. Even if they are, you might have to get
up and climb back on to fly to safety. If you can't do that, you'll never be a skyrider.”

Averan had fallen from her graak on landing a dozen times. She'd always gotten up.

Now, though she felt more desolate than ever, she merely bit her lip and looked around.

The dark, deserted village seemed much changed. The walnut trees lining the road hunched like sinister old men, and Averan worried about what might be hiding in their shadows. The cozy cottages, with their thatch roofs and hide windows now seemed as stark as tombs in the starlight.

The girl rose, and the air carried the scent of cool dampness. A strong wind lashed the ground. She pulled on her clothes.

The green woman climbed from her shallow grave and searched the sky longingly, squinting at the wind. “Blood?” she begged.

“I don't know
where
you can get any blood,” Averan said. “You can't have mine. Here, let's find something to eat.”

Averan gave the green woman her bearskin coat so that she wouldn't be naked.

Then Averan began looking through the garden for something to eat. As she got down on her knees, she told herself, Don't worry if you've lost your endowments. Just count yourself lucky. After all, you're not the one who died.

The garden soil was loose and well tended. Though the folks who had planted the garden had dug up the vegetables and carted them off, they'd done so hastily.

Earlier, Averan had seen a few small carrots and turnips still in the ground; the grape vine that climbed the stone fence still held a few grapes. She felt sure that so long as she stayed in the village, she'd be able to forage for enough food to keep her going for a day or so. She imagined that she'd find a few apples, pears, and plums on the ground by the trees.

Averan got on her knees, looking in the starlight for sign
of the carrot leaves. As she crawled through the soil, she felt for the carrots rather than looked for them, since she knew the touch of their feathery leaves. She brushed the top of one carrot, but somehow knew without grasping its base that it was too small to eat. It would be stunted, thin and bitter.

Yet a moment later, she felt the urge to grasp in the soil at a spot where no carrot top protruded. When she did, she found a nice big carrot, hidden there in the dirt. Someone had tried to pull it from the ground and had only managed to rip off the top leaves. With a bit of wiggling, she pulled out a carrot as long as her forearm.

She held it, wondering how she'd known it was there.

For her part, the green woman gaped fearfully up at the sky. Each time the wind buffeted her, the green woman gasped in surprise and whipped about, as if afraid that some invisible hand had touched her.

Averan showed her prize to the green lady. “Carrot,” she said. “Carrot. Tastes pretty good, like blood, but it doesn't run away when you try to catch it.”

She held it for the green woman to see in the thin starlight, then took a big bite. The carrot was still dirty, but to Averan the dirt tasted as sweet as the carrot. She offered the green woman a bite.

The green woman bit off the end, then knelt on her haunches, chewing thoughtfully like a pup that has just discovered its first shoe.

Averan swallowed her prize quickly, and wanted more. She closed her eyes, crawled ahead in the garden half a second, trying to sense another carrot.

In moments, she found another with its top torn off, just as big as the first. She pulled it. The green woman inched over, looked at Averan's carrot. In near total darkness, she pulled another that had been hidden from Averan's view.

Of course she can find them, too, Averan realized. We are creatures of the Earth now, and the Earth knows where its treasures are hid. “All the fruits of the forest and of the field” are ours.

Something odd was happening. Though she'd lost her endowments, she'd gained something else.

I'm not a commoner, she decided. Not with green blood flowing through my veins.

Averan added some parsnips to her hoard, then walked under the trees at the side of the house, where she quickly “found” figs that had fallen in tall grass where others couldn't see them. She soon added to her repast some mushrooms and hazelnuts.

When she had enough food, she led the green lady in the darkness to a large building at the center of town, some kind of guildhall or storehouse. Perhaps in the winter it served as a marketplace sheltered from the wind and rain. Or it may have been a songhouse built with a high roof so that the singer's voices would echo and fill the room. Now the building was empty, its huge doors thrown wide.

The green woman padded quietly behind Averan until they reached the open door. The doors were large enough so that a pair of hay wagons could easily drive through them into the building.

Averan peeked in. She could see nothing. But immediately she heard the desperate shrieks and whistles of ferrin. In moments, twenty of the hairy little man-shaped creatures raced from the building, seeking escape, afraid that Averan might try to kill them.

One ferrin ran over Averan's foot and tripped, rolled head over tail, spilling some crumbs that it carried in a scrap of cloth. Averan could have booted it across the street, but though she'd never liked ferrin, she'd never wished one dead, either.

“If the ferrin like it here, then this place should be safe,” Averan assured the green woman.

“If the ferrin like it here, then this place should be safe,” the green woman repeated.

Averan crept into the huge building. In its rafters high above, pigeons cooed querulously.

“I'll bet the ferrin were after those birds,” Averan said. In the pale light slanting in from the door, she spotted a
pile of feathers on the floor. “Looks like they got one.”

The green woman prowled over to the pile of feathers, sniffed at it. “Blood, no?”

“I wouldn't eat it,” Averan agreed. “Blood, no.”