Secrets of the Wolves (19 page)

I stood and shook puddle water from my fur. Jandru immediately seized me in his jaws again, dragged me to NiaLi’s shelter, and pushed his way through the antelope skins that hung in a narrow opening to the structure. Then he tossed me onto the hard-packed dirt and dried grasses inside.

“I think she would have come on her own four paws, Jandru.” The old voice, filled with amusement, calmed me.

“She needs to remember who’s in charge in this valley,” Frandra snarled, stalking into the old woman’s home. “You were supposed to come to us five nights ago, pup.”

Shakily I got to my feet and greeted NiaLi, then faced the Greatwolves.

“I was coming,” I said. “I was trying to get the humans to accept us in their homesite first. Then we could tell the council we were succeeding.”

Frandra glared at me.

“You really do think we’re fools, don’t you? Do you think I don’t know that you care more about your humans and your friends than about the Greatwolf council? You do whatever you like and then make excuses for it afterward. You think you know everything, but you don’t know enough about what happens in this valley to make decisions without consulting us. You had better learn that, pup.” She took a breath to calm herself. I watched her, surprised. I wasn’t used to seeing Greatwolves overcome by emotion. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “Things have changed since Ice Moon’s wane.” She shook her shaggy head, as if to clear it. “The council may no longer be satisfied with our bargain.”

“I know that,” I said before I could stop myself, then wished I hadn’t. I didn’t mean to tell the Greatwolves about my encounter with Milsindra.

“How do you know?” Frandra demanded.

Just then, Trevegg pushed his way into the old woman’s shelter. He greeted NiaLi first, accepted the bit of firemeat she slipped to him, then acknowledged the two Greatwolves. They did not return his greeting.

“If we wanted you to be here, oldwolf, we would have asked you to join us,” Frandra snarled. “Leave.”

Trevegg sat next to the old woman’s fire and wrapped his tail around his legs. Jandru raised his hackles and bared his teeth, I scooted back against the wall of the shelter, but Trevegg glared right back at the Greatwolf.

“Oh, quit marking your territory, Jandru,” the oldwolf snapped, his own hackles lifting in annoyance. “I’ve lived nine winters and hunted a valley’s worth of prey. Do you think I fear anything you can do to me?” Trevegg glared at the two Greatwolves. “Now, what is this about?”

Jandru closed his lips over his teeth, and Frandra gave a soft growl. I watched the two Greatwolves, doing my best to avoid staring at them in a way they might consider disrespectful.

The old woman’s new shelter was small and the fire in the center took up some of the space. Four wolves and one human crowded it. I pressed myself against the stone-mud walls as both Greatwolves growled.

“Come now, my friends,” NiaLi said at last, breaking the tension. “Frandra, Jandru, you did not bring us together to keep your secrets.” Both Greatwolves looked at the old woman, and Jandru lowered his ears to her. I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d lowered his ears to a forest deer. I’d never have thought a Greatwolf would treat any human as an equal.

“We didn’t bring
all
of us together at all,” Frandra said, glaring at Trevegg.

“Ask the pup,” Jandru grumbled, “since she seems to know so much that she doesn’t have to consult us when she’s supposed to.”

Four pairs of eyes turned to me. I considered whether or not to tell the Greatwolves what I knew. Jandru and Frandra were two of our only allies among the Greatwolves, but I didn’t trust them the way I trusted Zorindru, the Greatwolf leader. They had been willing to let my pack and my humans die and to use me the way the humans used their tools. I looked down at my paws.

“Come over here, Kaala,” NiaLi said. She sat near the fire, on a pile of furs and preyskins, wrapped in still more skins. I walked over to her and sat at her feet, pressing gently against her. She smelled of the skins and of herbs dried in the sun.

“Will you tell me?” she asked. “I would like to know.”

I would do anything for NiaLi. Still, I hesitated, torn between my need for allies in the Greatwolf council and my fear of betrayal. I looked up into the old krianan’s wrinkled face. She was thinner than she had been, as many of the humans were after winter’s hardships, but there was something else, too. She smelled of weakness, of a fading of life, and in spite of that she also smelled of strength and confidence, of a certainty of what was right. I took a breath. She had known Jandru and Frandra longer than I could imagine. I might not trust them, but I trusted her. And Trevegg. I caught the oldwolf’s eye and saw that his hackles had lowered.

“I think it’s all right, Kaala,” he said.

I told them about Milsindra, how she had threatened me after the failed hunt at Oldwoods, though I revealed nothing of my mother or of my plans to outwit Milsindra and leave the valley to find her. I did tell them of Milsindra’s belief that the Ancients wanted me to fail, and how fanatical she was about it. I told them that she had said she would do everything she could to make sure that I did fail, even if I was able to get the humans to accept us.

“And you didn’t think to tell us this?” Frandra snapped. “It is not fanatical and Milsindra is not the only one who thinks it may be so. She has told the council that you have hunted with the humans and that it is unnatural that a wolf should do so. She said no true wolf would hunt with the humans and fail to let the council know. She’s convinced half the council that this proves that you are an aberrant wolf and a risk to wolfkind.”

When her words came to an abrupt halt, I raised my eyes and was shocked to see her shaking, unable to continue speaking. NiaLi reached out to Frandra, pulling the huge wolf down beside her.

“Why would they believe that?” I asked. “Are they stupid? It doesn’t make any sense.” Trevegg shoved his hip against mine in warning.

“Doesn’t it?” Jandru hissed, his eyes glittering in the light of NiaLi’s fire. “Well, perhaps this will. Milsindra has told the council that by hunting with the humans, you have angered the Ancients and that we will soon see the consequence of their wrath. If we do not stop behaving in ways unfit for wolves, they will send disaster down upon us. That we have had one warning already.”

“What warning is that, Jandru?” NiaLi interrupted, her voice gentle. “I have not heard of these warnings. Is it something you have neglected to tell me?” She was stroking Frandra’s chest, calming the trembling Greatwolf.

Jandru’s furious gaze left my face and softened when it settled upon NiaLi. He addressed her respectfully, as he would a wolf of equal status.

“If the Ancients grow displeased with a wolf or wolves, Nia, they will give three warnings—and if these warnings are not heeded, the Ancients will send death down upon us. The warnings can be a winter that lasts too long, or prey leaving the valley and causing starvation and war, or an illness that wipes out entire packs. Or”—he paused and looked at me hard—“wolves begin to disappear with no explanation and with no mark left behind.”

Trevegg rumbled loudly, deep in his chest. I went cold. A wolf
had
disappeared. Because of me. When I had long ago dared the other Swift River pups to chase the horse herd and Reel had been trampled, his death was not the only thing the pack blamed me for. Borlla was another of Rissa’s pups and my greatest enemy in the pack. She, Reel, and Unnan had terrorized me when I was the smallest and weakest Swift River pup. After Reel died, Borlla had stopped eating. Then she disappeared. With no explanation. With no mark left behind.

“Borlla,” I said. “This is because of Borlla?”

“We never found her, Jandru,” Trevegg said, “but she could have wandered away on her own. She was grieving. It can’t be enough to mean anything.”

A flicker of movement from above caught my eye. I looked up as a feather floated down to land on my muzzle. I sneezed, then twisted my head to peer up at the top of the old woman’s shelter. Hanging upside down, in the hole that allowed the fire-smoke to escape the dwelling, was a dark bird-shape. Tlitoo saw me watching him, quorked once, and pulled himself back out of the shelter.

Jandru’s gaze was still upon me. “Two nights ago,” he said, “a Wind Lake wolf went missing, a youngwolf not yet a year old. They have not found him, nor any trace of him. They looked everywhere to see if he’d gone exploring and they howled for him. There was no answer and he left no scent trail. No wolf has disappeared from the valley in my lifetime. Now two have vanished in less than half a year, and both of them after Kaala pulled the human child from the river.”

“How can it be my fault if a Wind Lake wolf disappeared?” I protested. I was tired of the Greatwolves changing the rules and then blaming me if I didn’t follow them. “I’ve done what you told me to do. I’m getting the humans to accept us more quickly than you thought I could. You should stop letting the council change the rules!” Trevegg bumped my hip again, hard enough this time to make me stagger.

NiaLi looked disappointed in me, but it was Jandru she addressed. “You know what I think of those stories, Jandru,” she said. “You know I do not believe that Sun, Moon, Earth, and Sky act in such a way.”

Jandru dropped his gaze from hers. After a moment NiaLi reached out her hand to him, and he shuffled to her and sat pressed against her, so that she was almost hidden between the two Greatwolves.

“And I know that you do not agree with me,” the old woman said, reaching up to stroke his great muzzle. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do now.” She stroked him once more, then frowned at me. “What they are not telling you, Silvermoon, is how great a risk they are taking for you. They stood up against the council when they saved you as a pup, and again when you were allowed to live after you and your friends stopped the fight at the beginning of winter. If you fail, they will lose more than their status in the Greatwolf pack. They will be killed, and not gently.”

I looked at Frandra and Jandru, seeing them for the first time not as all-powerful creatures, but as wolves who could be harmed, just as I could be. I had been so afraid of them for so long, and so angry at them for lying to me, that it never occurred to me that they could be frightened. Now that I had met the other Greatwolves, I could see that they were young for their kind. And now that I was looking for it, I could see that they were afraid.

The words left my mouth before I realized I had decided to speak them. “We have a plan,” I said, “a way to convince the council our way is right.”

I was sure the Greatwolves would laugh at me, as they had so many times before, but Jandru’s gaze was sober, and Frandra looked at me as if she thought I might have an answer to their problem. I swallowed once.

“What plan?” Trevegg demanded. Ázzuen and I had been working it out since we’d spoken to Tlitoo at Rock Crest and had not yet told the oldwolf.

Two more feathers fell upon my head as Tlitoo swung himself back through NiaLi’s smoke hole. He dropped rather than flew into the dwelling, landing with a thump at my feet.

“The wolves will not just live with the humans!” Tlitoo said. “The humans will also live with the wolves. Whole packs and whole tribes will hunt together. It is a
good
idea.” He looked up at me. “It might work, wolflet,” he whispered. His eyes were bright and less troubled than I’d seen them since he’d awoken us at Ice Moon’s wane. I wanted to find out what had changed since the other ravens had attacked him, but all three wolves were staring at me.

“This is true?” Jandru asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “Milsindra said she’ll find ways to make the council challenge our success even if the humans allow us to live with them. So we’ll succeed in a way that can’t be questioned.” I felt myself grow more certain with each word I spoke. “We’ll have humans live in wolf homesites, as well as wolves at human homesites, to show that we don’t have to be subservient to the humans, that they will follow our ways, too. We’ll be so successful hunting together that no wolf in the valley will question the value of joining with the humans, not even the council. We have other ideas, too.” Or at least we would once Ázzuen came up with them.

“You will show that wolves and humans together are stronger than they are apart,” NiaLi said, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“Yes,” I said. I looked down at Tlitoo’s feathered back, preparing to defend myself from the Greatwolves’ derisive laughter and scornful remarks. When none came I looked up to see a glint in Frandra’s eye.

“The raven is right,” she said. “It could work.” She stood, turned in a circle, sat, then stood again. “It might not be enough, but it could be. There are many on the council, Kaala, who wish to believe that you are the wolf come to save wolfkind. They are willing to be convinced.”

The eagerness in her voice made me nervous. I didn’t want to be the savior of wolfkind. NiaLi must have sensed my uneasiness. I often thought it was she, not the Greatwolves, who could read minds.

“It doesn’t matter what they think you are, Kaala,” she said. “It is a good idea, even if you are only a youngwolf doing the best she can.”

“If we thought that’s all she was,” Jandru grumbled, “we would have dropped her off a cliff moons ago.”

NiaLi smiled. “Either way, it is a worthwhile plan. Just two of us, to begin with, I think, Kaala? So your packmates will not be threatened? I will bring TaLi to your pack.”

As if NiaLi’s voice had summoned her, TaLi burst into the shelter, huffing and puffing. Her legs, chest, and face were covered in dirt, and her knees and hands were scraped, as if she had fallen in her haste to catch up with us. She held a rock in her left hand. I wanted to lick the dirt from her face, the blood from her knees, but I didn’t know what she was going to do with the rock. If she was planning to hurl it at one of the Greatwolves to defend me from them, I would have to stop her. She looked around the crowded dwelling, her nostrils flaring, as if even her weak human nose could smell the tension in the air. She raised the rock.