The Blood of Ten Chiefs (26 page)

It was an omen, thought Goodtree as she considered the canyon once more. Getting up that would be difficult, but not much harder than parts of the climb she had already made. And she felt a growing curiosity about the source of that little stream.

Carefully Goodtree began to climb, but as the summit grew nearer, she scrambled more quickly, caution fading so gradually she never knew when it disappeared.

Acorn clapped his hands to his head with a cry.

Fang stopped short as Lionleaper turned. Another stride brought the songshaper's wolf up to them and Lionleaper slid from Fang's back to catch the other elf as he fell.

"What is it? Did something hit you?" The warrior looked wildly about. Behind him he saw the rest of the tribe, stretched out in an irregular line across the rolling plain. The plain! What could drop on Acorn here? Swiftly he scanned the shivering grasses, searching for any sign of an enemy. But he saw nothing, and the sensitive noses of the wolves found no trace of any foe.

Joygleam jogged up beside them, her lean features creasing in concern. "Is he ill?"

"No—" said Lionleaper. "I don't know, but I'm afraid—" He could not voice the words. Acorn moaned and stirred against him, then relaxed once more.

"Afraid, warrior, because sickness can't be faced with a sword?"

"No!" Lionleaper glared at her over the singer's head. "Acorn thinks he's been sensing Goodtree. He said she was all right, traveling straight across the plain ahead of us, except when she stopped to look at the longtooth kill, and your trackers say the same. I'm afraid something's happened to her, and he is picking it up somehow."

The hunter sobered abruptly. "Dead?"

"I don't think so." Lionleaper swallowed, not liking to think about what might happen to Acorn if Goodtree died while they were mentally connected this way.

He looked down at the limp form he held. Once he had despised the song maker, frustrated because he and Goodtree shared something which the warrior could not understand. It would have been easy to hate Acorn now, linked to her in a way that none of them understood. He had thought at first that this bond somehow meant Recognition, that he had lost any hope of Goodtree's love—but he had never heard of such a connection even between the most devoted of mates. And now his anxiety for Goodtree had swallowed up all lesser emotions; as he felt the other elf shudder in his arms his heart was wrenched by an odd mixture of pity and envy for his pain.

"He can't ride—what do you want us to do?" Joygleam asked practically.

Lionleaper stared at her. He knew that she had had to perform the final mercy for comrades more than once when they were wounded beyond bearing on hunting expeditions far from home. They had had no healer in the tribe since Willow had died.

I don't know! You're older than I am—why are you asking me? he wanted to shout at her. He was perfectly sure now that he would not have taken the chieftainship if they offered it to him on a white wolfskin. But for now he had to pretend he could do it-—he had to hold together long enough to find Goodtree—alive... And he was suddenly determined that when that happened Acorn would be alive too.

"Let's make camp now. We can tend Acorn here and let the weaker ones rest while the hunters go after meat."

Joygleam nodded, and presently they settled Acorn on a soft bed of furs where a hillock curved around and provided a little protection from the wind. And Lionleaper stayed by him, smoothing the damp hair back from his brow and giving him water when he began to stir. But it was dawn of the following day before he came back to consciousness fully and told them that Goodtree had hit her head, probably in a fall, but she was on her feet and on her way once more.

Her vision still blurred if she turned her head too quickly, but Goodtree kept moving. She had come to herself just as the sun was lifting above the eastern peaks, to find Leafchaser licking her face anxiously. She hurt everywhere there was a where, but she was lucky to be alive and intact, and she knew it. There was no excuse for the carelessness that had made her miss her footing and fall. She told herself that whatever she was seeking would still be there when she arrived, but even now she found herself hurrying.

The way had grown easier, but the pines through which she was moving now had been forced to grow at an angle by the pressure of the wind, so that the evidence of inner ear and eye conflicted; she found herself inadvertently leaning so that they would seem upright. Finally she closed her eyes, and gripping Leafchaser's thick ruff let the wolf lead her through the wood.

The wind deformed those trees, but they changed, and survived... She wondered then, Have we elves also changed to survive this world, and if we have, what were we like when we began?

Only the wind answered her, and she could not understand what it was whispering. The brisk touch lifted the damp tangles of pale hair from her brow and tingled on her skin. It sang in her blood, stimulating her circulation until the throbbing in her head faded finally away. The wolf stopped then, and Goodtree let go of her and opened her eyes.

Below her lay a circular valley—no, a cup, a crater in the heart of the mountain with a round lake in its center that blazed back the brilliant blue of the sky. There was meadowland around it, and groves of trees like none in the Everwood, all in exquisite miniature.

Goodtree gave a great sigh. There was a feeling here that set an odd tremor rippling through her belly—the same shiver that came to her sometimes when Acorn told his tales. There was power here; she could feel it, and she would seek it even if it proved too great for an elf-woman to bear.

She folded the lionskin and laid it down, slipped bow and quiver off her shoulder and set them atop it, and the long-bladed spear after. She would not need them where she was going. She must pursue this path fasting now. She pulled off her doeskin tunic then, and leggings and boots as well, scarcely noticing as the wind pebbled her pale skin. The Wolfriders went to their soul quest naked as they were born.

**Leafchaser, I am going down there. You must guard these things for me and let none come after until I return. Do you understand?**

Amber eyes stared into hers for a moment, then the wolf pushed her cold nose into Goodtree's hand. **Come too ... hunt for you...**

**No! No hunting! I have to go alone! Please stay here and guard!**

The great wolf sat down, head slightly averted, tongue lolling as she panted in the thin air. She could not remember when Goodtree had tried to find her name before, and failed, but she recognized the finality in her elf-friend's sending. With a gusty sigh, she sank the rest of the way down and looked up at Goodtree.

**Will guard... Come soon...**

Three days later, Acorn and Lionleaper stood where Goodtree had stood, and looked down into the valley where she had gone. The sun still shone brightly, but far to the west cumulus clouds were capping the peaks with white towers. Leafchaser sat beside the pitiful pile of possessions that had been too much weight for Goodtree's spirit, but when the two elves began to seek a way down the slope after her, the wolf rose, snarling, to block their way.

Lionleaper looked at his companion helplessly. "She told Leafchaser to stop us!" He supposed they could ask their own wolf-friends to get the she-wolf out of the way, but he was not sure they would obey.

"Goodtree doesn't want us to follow her!" exclaimed Acorn in sudden anger. "We've hounded her for almost an eight-of-days, but we have to stop now—"

"Why?" Lionleaper began. "We don't even know if she's still living!"

"Even if she were dying, we wouldn't have the right. This was her choice. And there's magic in that place. We can't go down there. Don't you yet understand?"

"No..." Lionleaper hunkered down beside the pile of abandoned clothing with a sigh. "All I understand is that I had to follow her."

Acorn's sudden smile transformed his angular face. "So did I. ..." He lowered himself to the stone.

"The others are safe enough in the little vale at the top of the pass. I'll send Fang with a message for them," said the warrior. "Do you know enough stories to fill the time until she returns?"

Acorn laughed. "Long ago, in the time of legends, the high ones came to the world of two moons ..."he began.

By the end of the first day, Goodtree's belly was cramping with hunger until she wanted to scream. It had been that way when she tried this before, she remembered, and tried to distract herself by focusing on her surroundings.

For her vigil she had chosen a grove of what she called sun trees, for they were new to her, rising like columns covered with smooth bark that had a golden sheen. Their leaves were a translucent pale green edged with sunlight, and the radiance that shone through them filled the grove with a gold-green glow. If she concentrated on it, perhaps she could feel the luminous warmth penetrating her body. Her heart shook with longing to understand the secrets of those trees.

Fill me! Transform me! she prayed, opening her awareness to the sensation as if she were trying to contact a cub who was just learning to send. And for a moment she did feel it. Then the demands of her belly distracted her. She swore, and settled herself to try again.

Sometime during the third day the hunger pangs left her. Goodtree looked down at her naked body with a curious detachment. Her breasts were still pointed and firm, but her hipbones jutted painfully and she could count her ribs. It occurred to her that several days of hard travel after a lean winter had not been the best preparation for fasting, but the thought had no power to disturb her now.

What was disturbing her was memory.

Living with the wolves made it too easy to see life as they did—a succession of events whose connections were rarely remembered or recognized. The moons and the seasons flowed by; cubs were born and the old were killed or died. But one cycle of the seasons was much like another, and those who died nourished the unborn so that nothing was really lost, only transformed.

It was a good way to live, a way that had enabled the Wolfriders to deepen their bonds to the beasts with whom they shared their lives so that both survived. But there were times when understanding cause and effect required a linear view of reality. Perhaps, once she had done this, Goodtree would never have to think this way again. But to understand who she was now, it was essential for her to remember who she had been.

With the same discipline with which she would have back-tracked an animal to its den, Goodtree began to move backward along the paths of memory. The death of her father was a recent sorrow; the death of her mother more distant but in its way more painful, for Stormlight had died as violently as she had lived.

But how Goodtree's parents had ended did not matter. What was important was that with each death she had felt as if she had failed them, and there was too much that she could never say to them now. And yet somehow it still needed to be said.

They were so different! she thought in wonder. How could they have Recognized, and produced me? In theory, the offspring of such a union should have the best characteristics of both parents, or at best, something new. But I can't do anything unusual, thought Goodtree, the easy tears spilling from beneath her eyelids. Until I find my soulname, I don't even understand what every other grown Wolfrider knows! She shifted position on the grass beneath the sun tree as if she were in physical agony.

Mother! Why couldn't I have your courage?

The image of Stormlight came vividly to mind: midnight eyes bright and pale hair sparking wildly, preparing for the hunt as if she was going to war. Goodtree remembered sitting behind her mother on the wolf's back, clinging for dear life as they charged into a herd of branch-horns. She heard once more her mother's yell of triumph as the sharp spear bit, and relived her own terror when the murderous horns grazed her as the beast fell. She had sobbed hysterically all the way back to the hurst, and her parents had argued over it for hours— that was a painful memory too.

O my father, why couldn't I have inherited your calm patience?

She remembered the gentle abstraction in Tanner's face, already weathered by the years when she had been born. A lock of brown hair would fall over his eyes when he was working—and he usually was working, always trying to refine the process he had invented to tan the leather the Wolfriders wore. She had wanted to help him, she remembered, so that he would be pleased with her, but the acrid preparations he used had blistered her hands, and the fumes had stung her eyes until she ran away, weeping. He and Stormlight had argued about that, too.

I cried a lot in my cub days, Goodtree thought distastefully, but maybe I had reason. When did I stop being so sensitive, and why?

A chieftain's cub was adopted by everyone in the tribe, and she had certainly never lacked for food or care. But apparently it had not been enough to make up for the sense of separation she felt from the two beings she loved most in the world. She did not know what would have become of her if she had not had Leafchaser.

When Goodtree was small she had been sure that her father was the wisest elf in the tribe, just as her mother was the bravest and the most beautiful. But as she grew older, she had fought with her mother, refusing to hunt with her or learn the craft of the warrior and Stormlight's skills with the stabbing spear. Instead, she had spent long hours alone, practicing with the bow. Her father had tried to talk to her about the craft of the chieftain. Tanner had been old when Goodtree was born, and she understood now that he had suspected how young she would still be when she succeeded him. But she had refused to hear.

But they are both gone now, and I cannot turn back the seasons to seek them! Once more she wept as if her parents lay newly dead before her, but it was the loss of all they should have shared that she was weeping for. They had tried their best to help her, just as she had tried to please them. There was no blame for either them or Goodtree—all they had needed for understanding was time.

But they had not been given it. Where had those bright spirits gone when the flesh failed them? Was the soul extinguished, or did it dissipate like mist before the sun? Or did Tanner and Stormlight live still in some realm where even wolf-senses could not discover them?