Wolf-speaker (25 page)

Over the night the Song Hollow bats checked in, waking her with news of her friends. Iakoju had made it safely to the ogre dwellings around nightfall, starting a great deal of movement between buildings and a constant hum of ogre voices. The Long Lake Pack busied itself among the mine wagons, working pins that held wheels to axles out of their settings with their teeth, and chewing the reins until only scraps held them together. In the south, wood rats laid dry twigs and grasses at the base of the wall and around all structures but the gate and the stables. Dogs howled incessantly outside, as little fires erupted in the commander's office, the mess, and the barracks, keeping the men up all night.

At last, with only a few hours left until dawn, the activity ended. The People, and Daine, used the time in unbroken sleep.

She awoke at dawn, aching from tense muscles. In contrast to the racket of the day before, the animals were quiet. Even the birds who greeted the sun were silent, awaiting events. From the trees Daine watched as castle servants crossed the bridge in pairs, small groups, or alone, to enter the village. Parlan waited on the other side of the causeway, steering them to the inn. There were no soldiers to
worry about; Yolane relied on Tristan and the forts for protection.

Daine called to the castle mice as the sky brightened. Soon they reported back to her: only the nobles and Tristan remained there.

The sun rose. In the north and in the south, squirrels were working hard to free the fort horses and do as much damage as possible. The soldiers were finding that their morning bread, tea, porridge, and cheese were inedible. The ogres were collecting weapons and moving their children to safety.

Daine combed her hair and tied it back, then removed her clothes and shook them out before putting them back on. She ate cheese and stolen apples, groomed Cloud, and fed Kitten what remained of their previous night's fish. Last of all, she saddled the mare and tucked Kitten into her carry-sack.

Give them time, Tait had said, but she hadn't known the hours needed by her allies would strain her nerves so cruelly. Her tension was made worse by the fact that she heard little movement in the village. The cows had been milked before sunrise, livestock had been fed, but apart from that, the local two-leggers kept out of sight. It made her feel as if she had a ghost town at her back.

At last, she heard a sound like a huge bell hit from the inside, as loud here as it had been in the caves. It was followed by another sound from the
south, a hollow
thwap
! Billows of smoke appeared on the lake's southern shore. She would have to ask Maura what on
earth
her friend had managed to blow up.

Silver caught her eye from that direction: Stormwings, flying hard and homing in on the castle. She noticed they were as soot-blackened as chimney sweeps as they vanished inside the curtain wall.

She felt the hurrok trio come from the north. One bore a scroll in its left forepaw, and the gems in all their collars burned a bright yellow. They were in pain, clawing at the bands around their necks. Screaming in rage, the hurroks darted into the circle of the castle's wall. Checking the northern sky, she saw faint columns of smoke. Something was afire, but she couldn't tell what it was.

She waited briefly, and the fliers reappeared. This time the hurroks had riders who controlled them with reins and bit. They fought these as they had the collars, with no success. Two flew north. Daine shut her eyes and thought of Huntsong, then opened them to an eagle's vision. The mages on the hurrok pair were Redfern and Gissa. One hurrok tried to turn back, but Gissa was having none of it. Her mouth moved. A cloud of orange fire appeared on the immortal's rump. From the way he leaped forward, the fire must have hurt.

She turned to check the others. The Stormwings
bore two humans in rope slings. Tristan rode the hurrok: he too used fire to sting his mount forward.

Daine made her eyes human again, then mounted Cloud. “Now,” she told her companions. The pony raced for the causeway. All down its length, past the dock where the nobles kept a few boats and through the gate, Daine cringed, feeling exposed. Only when they were in the courtyard did she dare to sit up. There were no watchers on the castle walls, and the courtyard was empty.

Don't bother unsaddling me, Cloud told her when she dismounted. Find what you came here for. I'll hide in the stables.

“And rob every feed bag you see, right?” Daine whispered as she freed Kitten from her pack and put her down on the flagstones. Hanging the crossbow on her belt and the quiver over her shoulder, she trotted into the castle, the young dragon close behind.

Blueness and Scrap met her in the great hall. They looked smaller this way, though Daine could see that Blueness
was
a creature of noble bulk, for a cat. Scrap was a dainty thing, and fascinated by Kitten.

Have you seen anything like this? Daine asked the cats, picturing what she thought the model would look like.

No, said Blueness. Scrap! he said imperiously
when the youngster, sniffing Kitten's muzzle, didn't reply. Answer the question!

The young cat sneezed. No, she replied. But I have not seen all there is to see. We are not allowed in the mages' workrooms.

Show me where those workrooms are, Daine said. Quickly, please.

The cats led the way up a broad flight of stairs to a gallery on the second floor, and down a hallway. Kitten made as little noise as they did: her talons, which Daine thought might click like a dog's, only made tiny scratching sounds.

The new humans sleep here, Blueness said, stopping at the end of a long corridor. In those two sets of rooms, and those two.

Daine tried one door: it was locked. “Kit, remember how you popped the lock at the inn?” The dragon nodded. “Give this a whirl, will you?”

The dragon sat up on her hindquarters and eyed the lock with interest. She gave a soft trill, as she had at the inn. The lock shone gold for a moment, then went dull. Kitten made a clucking sound and trilled again, breaking the sound into a high note and a low one. The door swung open.

Can she teach me to do that? asked Scrap as they entered the suite.

You do not need to know it, replied Blueness, disappearing into the bedroom. You are too much of a pawful already.

The model was not there, nor in the other three suites. Daine frowned as they finished their search. They had seen magical workrooms, but none had contained models. Also, she had seen nothing that looked like the room where she and Scrap had heard of bloodrain.

“Where are Tristan's rooms?” she asked. “The man with yellow magic?”

They are near the ones of the human female who hates cats, replied Blueness. This way.

They returned to the gallery and circled its rim, then went down a short hall. Scrap's tail twitched angrily when they reached Tristan's door: it was shut. Daine grabbed the knob. It stung her hand, making her yelp. “Kit? This one's magicked. Can you do anything?”

Kitten stood on her hind feet and peered into the lock, then whistled two cheerful notes. Nothing happened. She scowled and whistled again, less cheerfully, more as a demand. Nothing happened.

Daine was trying to decide what to do now when the dragon moved back and croaked. The lock popped from the wood to land at Daine's feet, smoking, and the door swung open. Kitten muttered darkly and kicked the lock mechanism aside as she went in. Daine followed, trying not to laugh.

I wish I could do that, remarked Scrap wistfully as she and Blueness brought up the rear.

Tristan's suite was bigger than those granted to
his fellow mages, the furnishings more expensive. The central room was where Scrap had brought her last time. A study and a bedroom opened onto it; a dressing room and privy opened onto the bedroom. Unlike the other mages, Tristan did not have his own workroom. There was no sign of a model of the valley in his study. Indeed, except for a few scrying crystals and assorted books, they found none of the tools commonly used to work magic.

“What are you doing here?” a shrill, furious voice demanded. Daine, Kitten, and the cats faced the unlocked door. Yolane, in a thin nightdress covered by a lace robe, stood there. “Where is Tristan?” With a sneer she added, “I should have guessed you'd be a thief.”

Daine put a hand on her bow. It was loaded, but she didn't want to kill Maura's sister. “I wouldn't call names, if I was you,” she retorted.

Yolane backed up. “Tirell! Oram! Jemis! To me! Oram, on the double!”

Daine shook her head. “Yell all you like, they won't come. They're gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone'?”

“I mean it's at an end—the king knows what you're up to. The rebellion's uncovered. You'll never be queen.”

“Tristan!” called Yolane. “Gissa! Alamid?”

“They have more important things to do right now,” Daine told her. “The southern fort is burning.
The ogres in the north are fighting the overseers. The mages went to deal with all that.”

“You—” Yolane's face wasn't so attractive, twisted as it was in rage and hate. She turned and ran.

Kitten whistled an inquiry. “We can't,” Daine replied. “The model's the important thing right now.” Mice! she called silently, and added a picture of the model. Have you seen this? Will you look for it?

All over the castle the mice stopped to think and answer. Soon she knew none of them had seen it. “I don't understand,” she muttered. “It's got to be somewhere. They haven't seen anything like this bloodrain, either, and I know that has to be cooked in something.”

Did they mention the tower? asked Blueness. That is where all the mages gather to do their work.

When he said “tower,” she remembered a column of greenish brown smoke, and Huntsong's remark that he did not need to fly through death to know what it looked like. “That's a good question, Blueness. Mice, what about the tower?”

Silence that reached through every nook and cranny of the huge building in which they stood was her answer.

“Mice?” Her eye fell on Scrap. The young cat was backed into a corner, fur puffed out. She was trembling. “Scrap, what is it?”

I know what they mean, she whispered. There is a lizard in the tower, a cold one. Colder than
anything
.

When Scrap said “lizard,” the hair went up on the back of Daine's neck. It was the most sensible course, if the mages kept precious secrets in the tower. Tkaa had said a Coldfang would guard a thing until the end of time.

Outside in the gallery she heard Yolane cry, “Belden, wake up!”

There was no time to waste. “Scrap, how can I get into the tower?”

The cats ran out of Tristan's rooms. Daine followed, taking her bow off her belt and checking the bolt already loaded. It was blunt, more to stun than to slay, though it might have killed Yolane at close range. She switched it for a razor-pointed bolt, the tip hardened to punch through almost anything. She hoped it could put a hole in a Coldfang; if it couldn't she was in
real
trouble.

Scrap led them to another gallery, then a spiral stair. They climbed it high above Tristan's suite, passing broad landings that led to other floors. At last there was a window. Looking out, Daine could see over the curtain wall.

Here she felt the first touch of cold. Blueness, Scrap, go back, she told them silently. There's no sense in risking your lives.

But I
want
to, protested Scrap. She was so terrified
that all her fur was puffed out and her ears lay flat.

Blueness, take her away, Daine ordered. There's nothing you can do.

Come, Scrap, the older cat said. The fear that had puffed his tail up to bottle-brush size didn't show in his voice. We could only get in the way.

Daine knelt beside Kitten. “You don't have to come,” she whispered. Kitten glared and tried to climb past her. Daine shook her head and went first.

Thinking of Wisewing, she changed her ears to a bat's as they climbed, and listened to each scrap of sound. The cold thickened. Frost gleamed on the walls; curls of icy mist drifted around the small windows. Daine shivered in her thin shirt, and her nose ran. The stair narrowed; the curves tightened. How was she going to get off a shot around a corner?

The sound that made both ears twitch forward was a body, thirty-one feet ahead. Beaded hide brushed stone in a space much wider than the stair.

Fear made Daine's chest tight. When she could bear no more, she yelled, “Coldfang!” The echo hurt her ears: she made them human. “You'd best move—you're standing between me and where I want to go!”

Kitten whistled insults.

She heard a soft thud, then the buzz of a Coldfang rattle. Biting her lip so hard she drew
blood, Daine raised the crossbow. “Don't let it catch your eye, Kit. That's how the other one almost got us.”

It came tailfirst, on all fours and low, not headfirst or standing as she expected. The sight of the rattle and tail confused her for a second too long. The immortal half lunged, half slid, its weight slamming into her. Daine loosed, but the bolt went high to shatter on the wall. With a yelp the girl fell backward, the bow flying from her hand.

Kitten squeezed to one side. The girl kept rolling down the steep risers, losing arrows from her quiver as she fell. She was lucky the turns in the stair were so close: she couldn't build up any speed. All the same, her rattling progress, bumping into walls and stairs, knocked her silly. Protecting her head and neck with her arms, she kept her body tucked into a round ball and prayed. Kitten, trying to keep away from the advancing Coldfang, scrambled to avoid getting caught under her friend.

At the first landing they reached, Daine came to a halt. She grabbed the knob of a door leading from the stair and shoved. It opened on a hall furnished with suits of armor, old hangings, and wall decorations. Lunging to her feet, she ran in, the sound of talons on stone and that buzzing rattle loud in her ears.