Wolf's Blood (15 page)

Therefore, although the Nexans actually had a moderate fortune laid by, Tiniel must instead learn how to barter furs, items that could reasonably have been scavenged from the stronghold’s ruins, and the like. This was augmented with a certain amount of Liglimese coin (the dominant currency in the city-states), which could be assumed to have been supplied by Harjeedian. It was all very confusing.

Firekeeper didn’t mind the delay. She spent the time chasing down the horses that had been fattening on the mainland’s spring grass, and learning how to harness them properly to the wagons. The horses had gone half wild ever since they had been permitted to roam under Eshinarvash’s supervision, and she quite enjoyed reminding them of their place.

Once on the road, Firekeeper and Blind Seer were forced to keep human hours, but this was hardly a trial in the spring coolness. The local ravens and crows fed their curiosity by tracking the wagons, and their conversation was always interesting and sometimes even informative. Blind Seer had regrown the thickness of his coat over the winter, and was now shedding. Firekeeper kept a bag of the mats she pulled loose. Isende had indicated an interest in learning if she could spin wolf-wool into a usable yarn.

With the trails—one could hardly call them roads—muddy. and the wagons heavily (although not punishingly) laden, travel was slow. Firekeeper and Blind Seer took jaunts off into the forests, acquainting themselves with the denizens who were moving back into the area now that the worst of the Spell Wielders’ traps were gone.

From time to time a raven’s call would announce that one of the wagons had stuck or that Tiniel and his two assistants were in some trouble from which they couldn’t extract themselves. Firekeeper and Blind Seer would come loping back, and solve the problem. It was all very good for the wolf-woman’s sense of self-worth.

But one night, a day out from Gak, the colorful chaos of her dreams slid into something more.

Firekeeper is running, chasing a bright-feathered blue jay that is screaming creative invective at her
.

“Stupid! Stupid! Only a wolf would walk when she could fly!”

“How can I fly, stupid bird? I don’t have wings.”

“Do so! Do so! Just won’t look and find them!”

Firekeeper considers this with mounting confusion. She swims nearly as well as an otter. Running, she can pace a deer—at least for a short burst. She has climbed trees to where the squirrels keep their secret hoards, but never has she been able to fly.

“Stupid! Stupid!”

The jay dives into a dense growth of maple, spring-thick but close to the ground. Firekeeper dives in after, knowing the very leaves that hide the bird will keep it from easily launching itself skyward once more.

With the logical illogic of dreams, she finds herself in a pavilion-style tent, the green-dyed canvas filtering the sunlight as the leaves would do. There is no jay, and with the swift change of focus and pure absence of memory that only dreams hold, Firekeeper no longer seeks it.

Instead, she sits cross-legged on the soft moss that carpets the inside of the tent, and speaks to the man who lounges with comfortable insolence across from her. He is well-made after the human fashion, all but his head, which is that of a wolf. His clothing is blue, knee-britches, shirt, stockings, and waistcoat after the style of Hawk Haven. Fleetingly, the color makes Firekeeper think of birds, but she doesn’t wonder why.

“Meddler,” she says. “I thought you were seeking the way to your homeland.”

“Firekeeper,” he replies, “I am, but does this mean I cannot come and visit with a friend?”

Firekeeper bristles just a little at this, genuinely bristles, the hackles on her neck rising, for suddenly she is no longer a human, but a wolf, her fur thick and alive as the hair of a human is never alive. She looks at the Meddler through wolf’s eyes and from a wolf’s perspective, and does not find this in the least strange.

“Friend?” she says. “I wish I knew for sure. The tales told of you, Meddler, all have the same conclusion. Perhaps it is safer to be your enemy than to he your friend.”

The Meddler laughs. “Be my enemy, then if that reassures you, Firekeeper. Certainly, Blind Seer would prefer you felt so, but friend or enemy, it is good to see you.”

Firekeeper lets her ears prick forward and her hackles settle.

“What new gambit have you come to convince me is wise and good?” she asks.

“Gambit?” The Meddler looked slightly hurt. “I only wondered why you take this long mad to Gak when you could reach the town in moments.”

“A gate,” she says. “You think we should open a gate.”

The Meddler smiles winningly. “It would be so much easier.”

“There is no gate in Gak,” Firekeeper says. “The gate that served the area near Gak is the one in the twins’ stronghold. All the records agree.”

“Gak …” The Meddler waves a dismissive hand. “That is nothing. I was thinking of other places, places you would much rather go. Mishecmnekuru, for example. There is a gate there. The Liglimom thought placing a gate where their commoners could easily access it would be unwise. It’s on Misheemnekuru, right near where your friends the maimalodalum now reside.”

“We had surmised as much,” Firekeeper sniffs dismissively. “The maimalodalum live where the Liglimom built their greatest temples, dedicated to the deities in whose name they did the sacrifices that powered their spells.”

“Do you want to know where the gate is in Hawk Haven?” the Meddler teases. “I know where it is … .”

Firekeeper pretends not to hear. She does want to know where that gate is. Not a day has passed since she and Blind Seer returned from speaking to the local that she has not considered why the Beasts might have refused to speak with her about the coming of querinalo. Certainly. her parents could be convinced to speak to her. Shining Coat and Rip are guardians of the pass through the Iron Mountains. She suspects there are few secrets they do not know.

But Shining Coat and Rip are a long way north. Moreover, a broad expanse of water slices into the land between the southernmost reaches of the land on which Hawk Haven is, and the land of the Liglim. Firekeeper knows the overland journey could be made, but she also knows it would take months, maybe years. The only one she knows who has made that journey is dead now, and cannot advise her as to routes. Moreover, when he made his journey, he was not in any hurry.

As much as she hates to admit it, Firekeeper feels a growing sense of urgency whenever she contemplates the mystery of querinalo, and where it originated—and, most importantly, how it might be ended.

She lifts her head from where she let it rest on her paws while she thought, and looks at the Meddler. She knows now with perfect clarity of thought that he has pulled her from dreams into some other reality in which they might talk. Had this been a dream, he would probably have vanished entirely, or turned into something else—a flower or a pond. But there he sits, a man clad in blue-jay blue, his head that of an amber-eyed wolf.

“Do you know where querinalo began?” she asks.

“I don’t,” he says. “I’ve been trying to find out, but the trail is old and dry. The scents I have caught are elusive.”

“So you are looking as well,” she says. “This is not just something you set me on for your amusement.”

“Ask Truth,” the Meddler says, “if the future holds much amusement. Then see if you think of me as friend or enemy. Now, curl up and get some sleep. The easy days are almost over for you. You’ll need your rest.”

Firekeeper knows that in this at least, the Meddler speaks truth. Whether or not the maimalodalum send her word to come to them, she will be heading away from the Nexus Islands. A nagging sense of urgency will press her forth, even if nothing else does.

“I will speak with Truth,” Firekeeper says, curling on her side and burying her nose in her belly fur. “Although speaking with her is as maddening as a dream.”

The Meddler laughs softly. “Sleep well, Firekeeper. Peaceful dreams.”

And Firekeeper did sleep and in her dreams she ran, wolf and wolf with Blind Seer. The feeling was so strong and so true that she believed she would remain a wolf when she wakened, but when dawn came and the little camp roused, the fur in which she buried her nose was Blind Seer’s, not her own.

She had to fight down a very unwolfish impulse to weep.

VIII

  THE EMISSARIES STARTED arriving a few days after the written missives from their rulers. They spurred their mounts to be as swift as the wings of the carrier pigeons, guided by some gut instinct that in this circumstance the written word could never prove sufficient.

Gazes must meet. Gestures be noted. Posture, dress, composure must all be analyzed.

On one level, King Bryessidan of the Mires was relieved. He hadn’t looked forward to drafting replies to all those letters, to remembering the appropriate etiquette for dealing with these different peoples.

On another level he was alarmed. Where was he to put all these people? Certainly, the various nations maintained embassies, but those were often little more than large private homes. The overflow had to go somewhere. What entertainment would they expect? The last time the Mires had hosted such a large gathering of notables had been for Bryessidan’s own coronation, and that had been laboriously planned in advance, King Veztressidan not being one of those monarchs who persisted in the illusion that he would live forever and ever.

First to come was a small contingent from Hearthome, the nation that commanded the only land route into the Kingdom of the Mires. Being gatekeeper to the land that had tried to conquer it in living memory had made Hearthome inclined to view the Mires rather as a man might view a particularly spirited horse that now answers obediently to his hand on the rein.

It helped that King Veztressidan had never been a cruel conqueror. Rather, his delight in ruling Hearthome had been so obvious the residents had felt their own worth all the more strongly. Upon Veztressidan’s death. Hearthome had suggested that they would not hold the crimes of the father against the son—especially as the son had shown no tendency to follow his father’s inclinations.

Now, though, the emissary who arrived and made his formal compliments looked as if he was wondering if the horse had broken training and planned to throw the rider. Bryessidan did his best to say all the polite things, but alone with Gidji, he allowed himself to rage at the unfairness of it all.

Next to arrive was a contingent from Azure Towers. Azure Towers shared the Mires’ only other land border. Indeed, the rivers that emptied into the Mires passed through the Azure Towers uplands before draining into the wetlands. Veztressidan had coveted Azure Towers for control of those allimportant waters. Back in Bryessidan’s grandfather’s day, there had been a nasty situation regarding an ambitious plan to dam one of the key rivers, but natural forces had stepped in before raids could escalate into outright war. Heavy rains and flooding had proven the lack of wisdom involved in damming a major river so thoroughly there was no outflow. No one talked about it, but no one had forgotten it either.

Bryessidan listened to the words of the tall woman in her long gown of superfine wool, and heard beneath what she said the question:
“Are you the one building dams this time?”

He hastened to assure her not. and he hoped she believed him.

Emissaries arrived almost every day thereafter. The continent was not united as Bryessidan had been taught it had been in the days when sorcery had been the true law of the land. Then the Mires and its neighbors had all been one nation, the gates not the means of international commerce, but conveniences, doors between sections of one rambling house.

Gidji’s people came as part of what Bryessidan thought of as the second wave: that is, representatives of peoples who were not precisely neighbors, but who had lived close enough to see what Veztressidan’s ambitions might mean to them someday in the not too distant future.

Like many of those in the second wave, they came by ship, fighting contrary currents and annoying winds to the security of the harbor nearest to the capital of the Mires. Unlike many of those new arrivals, no mere emissary arrived but King Hurwin the Hammer himself. Gidji’s father and, despite his surface affability, a rather terrifying person to Bryessidan.

Tall, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, ruddy-complected, with fair hair that shone all the brighter where age touched it with silver, King Hurwin stooped to embrace his daughter and grandchildren before bothering with the formalities.

The second-youngest, four-year-old Neysa, chirped, “Grandpapa, you’re hard to hug. My face is all bruised!”

King Hurwin laughed, knuckling the child’s head with rough affection.