Wolf's Blood (10 page)

Derian knew that in his turn, Harjeedian had difficulty in accepting a government where matters of religion and of rulership were so distinctly separated. In Liglim, the disdum were also the rulers, and if the omens showed that someone from outside the disdum was to be appointed to a ruling position, then they also automatically were viewed to be part of the disdum. Such had been the case with Harjeedian’s sister Rahniseeta, and her agreement to become junjaldisdu, the supreme representative of divine Water had begun with her breaking her engagement to Derian.

Derian could think about those events without a twinge, now. Well, almost without a twinge. Especially if he thought about how the people of Hawk Haven were not so different from the Liglim in the matter of religion and government. The Hawk Havenese might turn to their ancestors for supernatural guidance, rather than to the omens supplied by elemental deities, but each Hawk Havenese included the ancestors of the royal family, from Zorana the Great forward, among those from whom they sought guidance.

The situation in the Nexus Islands was quite different. The Once Dead and their associates who had sought refuge in the Kingdom of the Mires had been from many different lands, with many different religious customs. Bound by the immediate demands of survival, they had accepted the king of the Mires’ decree that they tolerate religious differences. Ten years of near isolation on the Nexus Islands had changed this practice only slightly. Although it was never stated as such, the Spell Wielders had become the new deities, decreeing death for infractions, and extracting their tribute in living blood.

Sometimes Derian wondered what the next permutation would be. As the New Year approached—at least the New Year as it was counted in his own land, where the new year began with the coming of the planting season—he had suggested that some sort of celebration was in order.

Immediately, he had been informed that there were at least three different starting dates for the new year according to calendars brought from their homelands by those who now lived on the Nexus Islands. Moreover, the Nexans had their own calendar, one that dated the new year from their holding the islands separate from the rulership of any other land.

In the name of convenience and general accord, the new year was now celebrated in what Derian would call Hummingbird Moon. Derian had quickly agreed that he had no problem with following local custom, but now he regularly burned incense in his ancestral shrine, and prayed for guidance to help him avoid stirring up any other such wrangles.

But for today Derian dismissed both thoughts of future religious conflicts and Harjeedian’s conference with Urgana from his mind. The several days he and Firekeeper had been away to see Doc, Elise, and the new baby had been time enough for any number of small problems to develop, problems that, for some reason, he was the only one anyone thought could find a solution.

First, however, he needed to get up to the gates and see for himself that Skea was putting the promised security precautions into place.

As much as Derian wanted to trust Skea and Ynamynet—and they had shown no sign of being untrustworthy to this point—still there was no need to be careless.

And very many reasons indeed to be careful.

A GIFT TO a wise raven named Lovable of rough beads made from broken glass brought Firekeeper and Blind Seer the information that Harjeedian was likely to be some days bringing Urgana around to his theological position.

“And Ynamynet says that no one has come forward with tales to tell,” Firekeeper said mournfully to Blind Seer, watching the black and glitter that was Lovable and her prize winging off toward the sun. “Here I am, all wild for a hunt, and no game in sight.”

“We might catch the scent another way,” Blind Seer suggested, raising his head from his paws.

“Tell!”

“I have been considering,” Blind Seer said, well pleased with her eagerness, “other ways we might research this matter. Human tales are well and good enough, but there are others who have ears and eyes and memories—and these others have an advantage the humans do not. If the tales we have of the Fire Plague are true, our own people were not touched by it.”

Firekeeper grinned at him, her dark, dark eyes shining with pleasure. “You are wise, sweet hunter. I wonder though, might not the local yarimaimalom share the same prejudices as do Urgana and Harjeedian? Many of them share the same beliefs as the Liglimom.”

“Possible,” Blind Seer agreed. “Very possible, but here we are in lands far enough south that Liglim’s influence is not so strong among either humans or beasts. If we run farther west, we may find those who, like our own pack, have never heard the merest whisper of this faith.”

“A run sounds good in any case,” Firekeeper said. “Spring warmth comes to the southern lands sooner than to our own forests. Where our home pack ranges, nights are still cold and the new leaves only testing their welcome, but when we returned last from the mainland, I noticed that the birds were already spring mad, and the season well advanced.”

“Then we go?” Blind Seer said, rising and stretching, nose tip to tail tip.

“As soon as we tell Derian,” Firekeeper said, “and find who is available to work the gate.”

They found Derian easily enough, but had to wait until he settled an argument between two humans over who had the rights to some furnishings discovered in a ruin they had been laboring to clear away.

Derian welcomed them, listened as Firekeeper explained where they were going, and nodded.

“Good thinking. The note Harjeedian sent to me earlier agrees with Lovable’s assessment. He adds that he thinks Urgana can be convinced, but only if handled gently and given time to meditate between discussions. I spoke with Ynamynet earlier, and she added that her feeling was that a few who might have tales are waiting to see how Urgana is treated.”

The redhead shoved a hand through his thick hair, pushing his forelock back, though it flopped over his forehead immediately after.

“I don’t blame them for not trusting us,” he said, “but having you elsewhere, rather than providing a visible reminder that this is more than a theoretical discussion, won’t hurt either.”

Firekeeper nodded.

“Who is gate opener?” she asked. “So I find.”

Derian glanced at a list tacked to his wall.

“Kalyndra.”

“We be back in some days,” Firekeeper promised, and gave Derian a quick hug.

Derian hugged her back. “You’ll need to tell the gatekeepers something more solid than that, so they know when to check for you.”

“Three days?” Firekeeper hazarded.

“Three should be enough,”
Blind Seer agreed,
“at least for us to make a start.”

“Three days,” Firekeeper repeated. “To make a start.”

Blind Seer gave Derian a long, stretching bow, and Derian reached out and tugged the scruff of the wolf’s neck.

“Keep her out of trouble,” Derian said.

“And me, him,” Firekeeper said.

KALYNDRA WAS ONE of the very small number of new permanent residents to be added to the community on the Nexus Islands. She had appeared one day through a gate that connected the Nexus Islands to a land called Tey-yo.

Even if the maps of the gate complex had not supplied this information, the New Worlder conquerors—as they still very much were at this point—would have guessed, for Kalyndra had raven-wing glossy, blue-black skin even darker than Skea’s, and Tey-yo was the land that Skea and the few Nexus Islanders who shared his coloring had identified as their homeland.

Unlike many of the active gates, which connected lands that were relatively close geographically, Tey-yo was so far south that Skea claimed even the stars made different patterns in the night sky. Back in the days when King Veztressidan was beginning to lose his wars, the gate to Tey-yo had been opened in the hope that reinforcements for his army and magical corps might be recruited from there, from peoples who had no alliances with those Veztressidan had made his enemies.

In Tey-yo, King Veztressidan’s efforts to recruit had met with limited success, for the gate had been built in a city set high on a plateau where the weather was comparatively cool. Without magic to ease the passage up and down from that plateau, most of the inhabitants had moved away. Those who had not had descended into savagery. Only within the last fifty or so years, as the violence of querinalo’s fevers ebbed, had people begun to return. These were mostly the magically talented and their kin, exiled from their families when their abilities became evident. Therefore, the community there was small.

Skea had been the son of a pair of those who had come to reclaim the city. He had been born on the plateau, and had joined in battle with the things that dwelt in the green tangled ruins from the time he could walk. Later, when he was a man grown, Skea and some others had gone from the city of the plateau into the service of King Veztressidan, who welcomed Twice Dead along with Once, eager for any augmentation to his forces. There they traded their services for supplies to help the kindred they left behind.

When Kalyndra arrived on the Nexus Islands, a moonspan and more had passed since the conquest had been completed, time enough for stories to be shared and personal histories to be known. Therefore, when the gate to Tey-yo shone with the swimming shadow that indicated the gate was coming alive, Skea was alerted. The muscular Twice Dead had stood impassively as a single form made its transit.

Blind Seer had turned to Firekeeper and commented, “Skea’s face is calm, and his limbs relaxed, but his sweat reeks of apprehension. Have a hand to your Fang, dear heart. I do not think an enemy comes, but there is something more here than Skea is saying.”

First through the gate was the woman they now knew as Kalyndra. The composed, well-groomed woman who now turned in grave welcome as the wolves entered the center of the gate complex was far improved from when they had first met her. Now she stood sleek and tall, the thick, wooly hair that fell to her waist twisted into hanks ornamented with fat beads and loops of copper wire, the heavy white robe she wore pristine. Then she had seemed some strange beast, her hair a mane, her skin sheened with blood where it was not matted with filth.

She had been alone, but not alone, for she bore in her arms a man sorely wounded, a man who would die within hours of the transit, a man who, they soon learned, was Skea’s father—as Kalyndra was Skea’s mother.

Two more came through soon after. One was a boy child, the other a young man stumbling sick with what anyone with a nose immediately knew was the onset of querinalo.

All was chaos for a long while then. The gate’s shimmering surface had fallen cold and dead after the second transit. With wounded to tend, no one considered the possibility that this might be the front line of an invasion.

None but for Firekeeper and Blind Seer, who had learned to respect human cunning. The pair kept watch through the day and the long night that followed. Only the next day did they learn how slim was the likelihood of anyone coming through that gate ever again.

Kalyndra told the tale, although her skin was ashen and her eyes were red with grief for the husband who had died in her arms only hours before.

The settlement on the plateau had been attacked and overwhelmed. The attack did not come from the savages or from the strange creatures who still lurked in the ruins, despite the best efforts of over thirty years spent attempting to eliminate them. The attack came from the peoples who inhabited the towns and villages in the jungles surrounding the base of the plateau, people with whom the plateau dwellers had traded and who they thought were their friends.

But a man possessed of nothing but two interlinked qualities had come to the region, a man who would have been nothing but for those two qualities. One was a charisma so blinding that Kalyndra said many thought it was a talent. The other was a belief that his star-ordained role was to unite the scattered villages and make from them one people again.

This man knew that in order to overcome the factions and feuds that had grown up among the various villages—most of which were nothing more than extended families—he must find something for them to hate and fear more than they hated and feared each other. He found this in the city on the plateau, and the still vivid memories of the sorcerers who had ruled before querinalo.

“Nearly overnight he could convert a village to his cause,” Kalyndra said, “and as his horde of followers grew, others joined. I am certain not all believed in his cause or his vision. I believe that he will not long outlive us, but for those of us who lived on the plateau, unwarned, not anticipating treachery, there was no defending ourselves.”

Firekeeper had not understood much of what Kalyndra had said about how exactly her people had been destroyed. Too many of the words Kalyndra used were unfamiliar, and although Skea did his best to translate into Liglimosh, that language was not his first, and he frequently was less than clear.

What was clear beyond a doubt was that Kalyndra and the other two could not return to their home. Watch was kept upon the gate to Tey-yo, but no one else came through. When, a hand of days later, Ynamynet insisted on opening the gate so that Skea and a few others might pass through and rescue any survivors, the gate did not come alive, no matter how loudly she said her chants or how much blood was poured in the cutstone channels.

“Broken from the other side,” Ynamynet said, her manner as cool as ever, but her eyes nonetheless bright with tears. She knew many of those people, for the gates had meant that she and Skea had been frequent visitors to the city on the plateau, where they had found a welcome they would never find in her homeland.

Firekeeper knew Ynamynet had tried to open the gate, repeatedly over the days that had followed, only resigning herself to failure when Kalyndra herself took her daughter-in-law aside and chided her for spending energy on the dead that was needed for the living.

So Kalyndra had taken up residence on the Nexus Islands, moving into the house adjoining the one in which her son and his family lived. She was Once Dead, trained in sorcery and spells, but the death and destruction she had experienced had killed any ambition she might once have had. Before long, she was trusted enough to be given a watch stand near the gates, one of three who had the power to awaken the artifacts for use. The young man who had been carried through also had known the spells, but querinalo had stripped him of his magic, while preserving him alive to mourn his people.