Wolf's Blood (43 page)

“But we knew you were missing,” Elation went on, “and when no one found you dead, and no one found you living, we began to expand the area of our search. You must understand, many of us did this for love for you, or from gratitude for what you had done for us. Others, however, joined the search because from the moment you and Blind Seer crossed the Iron Mountains, you have become unknowable properties, and sometimes the actions you have taken have given reason for alarm. Derian Carter, as your closest human ally, was also one these felt should not be permitted to drop from sight.”

Firekeeper thought how she had chosen to make her own interpretation of the orders given to her back in the days when Queen Valora had taken the artifacts from the castle at Silver Whale Cove. She thought how she had argued for the lives of the humans in New Bardenville, even though that settlement threatened to violate the treaty lines that had been drawn between Beast and human since long before the coming of the Plague had drastically set back human colonization efforts.

She could understand why some of the Royal Beasts continued to view her as unknowable, and she felt a perverse pride in this. After all, although she was a wolf, she was no longer a pup. Didn’t she have some right to make her own decisions?

“When many had begun to give all three of you both up for dead,” Elation continued, “and to offer theories and conjectures how such an unusual trio might vanish without a trace, a pair of fish eagles came from the far south, across the deep inlet that has always divided those heretical lands from our own. When the winged folk who held those reaches would have driven them back as they had time and time again, these ospreys shrieked your names and requested parley.

“By then the search for you three missing ones had become common enough knowledge, at least among those who fly long distances, that the ospreys were permitted to land and speak their piece. What they told us, you already know.”

Firekeeper nodded.

Blind Seer growled, “And since then communication has been slowly reestablished between Wise and Royal. Is it through this link that news of our journey north came to your attention?”

“Indirectly,” Elation replied. “Was this a violation of some trust?”

Blind Seer looked at Firekeeper, and Firekeeper shrugged.

“Not really,” she said. “I don’t think that we expected any much to care if we went looking for some old ruins.”

“Is that what you seek, then?” Elation asked. “Ruins?”

“We seek what was once the lair of a human named Virim,” Firekeeper said. “He lived in the days when the Plague was first released into the lands, and although we have heard a few tales that might indicate he lived unduly beyond that time, we will first accept what is the evidence of our ears and eyes …”

“And noses,” Blind Seer added. “But I think you know more than we do, Elation. What is it you have to tell us?”

“What if I told you,” Elation said, “that this Virim and his pack not only live, but live here west of the Iron Mountains, where human kind is said not to be welcome. What if I told you that they maintain their lair not through violence or strong walls, but because the Royal Beasts protect them?”

Firekeeper thought of the golden eagle that had pursued Elation and her heart grew tight within her. Still, she made her lips speak the words she felt in her heart were right.

“I would say I thought you must be mistaken, for how could this be?”

Elation made a sad little crying noise, “But I am not mistaken. What I have told you is the truth, and I have flown here lest you be unwarned and slain by those you think of as kin.”

XXI

  “AS THE TALE was told to me,” Elation said, “and I have no reason to believe that account was wrong, for it was told to me in an effort to keep me from doing precisely what I have done, this is how Virim came to build his nest in this region, and how for over a hundred years the Royal Beasts have guarded him, to his benefit and to their—or should I say ‘our’—abiding shame.”

“CAN WE BE honest?” Virim said. “There is a war about to begin.”

He paused, swallowing a swelling lump of discomfort beneath his breastbone. Over the course of the last few decades, Virim had given any number of speeches. He considered himself a good speaker—even an excellent speaker. However, he had never tried to give a speech to an audience whose reactions he could so little judge. He had been assured that those to whom he spoke would understand him, but still …

A raven, a moose, a wolf, a puma, a raccoon, a bear, several raptors, a doe, an elk, a wolverine … and these were the animals who had possessed the courage to step forth and face him. He suspected there were others who lingered listening in the shadowed greenness of the surrounding forest. It was an unsettling thought.

The wolf hammered at one ear with a hind foot. An eagle shifted leg to leg. The bear scratched its belly with one forepaw. The doe stepped over to a shrub and bit off a bunch of leaves and stood chewing them, her liquid brown eyes studying him with absent thoughtfulness.

Virim forced himself to remember that humans would fidget as much or more, and continued speaking.

“Perhaps it would be more honest to admit that this war never really ended. Certainly, no treaties were signed, no formal agreements reached—at least in most circumstances. Rather, humans acquired what they wanted—free run of all the lands east of the Iron Mountains—and the Beasts retreated to where they thought they would be safe. I am here today to tell you—as I have already told some of your people—that this respite is ending. Humans are preparing to cross the Iron Mountains in force, and this time a simple geographic barrier will not be enough to stop them.”

The raven croaked something that sounded remarkably like “Why?” and Virim chose to take this as a question.

“Why? Because in the decades since humans first came to the New World, they have not merely founded cities, clear-cut forests for farmland, replaced the native animals with ones brought from the Old World. Humans have done more than this. They have established a foothold for their magical powers. They have discovered the means by which they can more easily surmount the difficulties offered to them by the Iron Mountains. In short, they are far more powerful than those your ancestors fought against—and finally fled from.”

The Beasts who were his audience studied Virim with unblinking eyes. There was no scratching now, no idle chewing of grass or leaf. Virim had their full attention, and he was surprised at how uncomfortable he found the assorted gazes of their inhuman eyes.

“I have come,” Virim went on, “to offer you an alternative to war. I have come to offer myself—and some few humans who think as I do—as your allies.”

Again the raven croaked, “Why?,” and more confidently Virim replied.

“Because I think what my fellow humans plan to do is wrong. Why? Because unlike many of them I was born in the New World, and strange as it may seem to you, I think of these lands as my home. When I was a boy I showed promise of great magical ability, and because of that I was taken to the Old World to receive my training. My parents explained to me that this was a great honor. My teachers never let me forget the wonders the Old World offered.

“Those teachers took me and my classmates on tours of the great monuments of the Old World. We marveled over prism towers that shot rainbows even when the sky was overcast. We wondered over fountains and falls that ran with fire, as more usual ones run with water. We were permitted to study creatures conjured from magic, and to ride high above the earth on the backs of dragons and griffins. We were lifted so high above the surface of the earth that the most teeming human cities seemed like something a child might build from blocks, that the tilled fields and cropped pastures were but scraps among the greater untamed green.”

A falcon with sharp-cut wings, a peregrine, Virim thought, gave a sharp shriek of what Virim thought might be laughter. He abruptly terminated his oratory. Such images might impress a human audience, but he had to remember that such vistas were nothing new to many of the Beasts, and that they would have viewed them under their own power, not dependent upon the ability of another.

He lowered his tone to inflections of humility, and noted that the ears of the wolf and puma twitched to follow his shifted tone.

“Many of my classmates did not see what I saw. They gloried in the power of human deeds, and failed to see how minuscule they were in contrast to what the natural world did so effortlessly. Me? The more I saw what passed for the wonders of the Old World, the more I longed for the simpler glories of the New. I longed to be again where I might hope to know the natural world through those who lived close to it. I longed to be home.

“And to the New World I returned when my time of training had ended. I went not as many of my classmates went, souls awash with bittersweet sorrow at being parted from all that was marvelous. Unlike them, I did not return with a desire to make the New World more and more like the Old. I went hoping to use my abilities to draw closer to those who understood my birth land far better than I ever had done.

“And many of you know that I followed that purpose with all my heart and soul. I sought the Beasts who I knew must still dwell among humanity. I found them first in the winged folk, but later, here and there, I found them intermingling with their less gifted cousins. Slowly, with great care, I made a friend here, another there. Never did I tell any human that humanity’s former opponents moved freely among us, even nested on our proudest buildings. Repeatedly, I spoke out against exploitation of the New World’s resources, against transforming it into a poor copy of the Old.

“But although I made some converts among humanity to my way of thinking, overall, I must admit that I failed. The majority of those with magical ability—and in the Old World and the New alike, these are the ones who rule—saw the New World as a treasure vault to plunder for their own gain. I don’t need to tell you that not all the resources they sought were mineral or vegetable. You have seen the horrors they have perpetrated upon the thinking Beasts of the New World.

“I protested, but what good would such protests do against men and women who did not hesitate to mine their own race for blood with which to power their spells? The spellcasters in particular had come to view any who did not share their ability as unworthy of consideration as equals. Why would they extend this courtesy to creatures with whom they did not share even a common race? Their view was that if they could use the Beasts, they would use them. That was the only rationale that made any sense at all.”

Virim dragged his hands across his face, feeling the tips of his fingers abrade the skin before anchoring in the tangled length of his beard. It was a good gesture before a human audience, but his animal audience looked unimpressed by this expression of grief and anguish.

He let his hands drop, straightened his shoulders, and raised his voice to more dynamic tones.

“Now time enough has passed that humans desire fresh challenges. Not only has a new generation trained to the magical arts arisen, hot with a desire to prove themselves, but also, through their arts, many of the older generation remain alive and powerful. Some of these wish to expand their abilities and resources. Others wish no more than to exhaust those younger spellcasters by sending them where other rivals—human and Beast—will thin the ranks. Where to find such rivals? Where to find these potent challenges? West of the Iron Mountains, of course. West into what land remains to you and yours.”

This time his oratory had some effect. The wolverine and bear both growled. The puma unsheathed a pawful of impressively menacing claws and took a swipe at the trunk of a fallen tree, leaving deep slashes in the wood. The other animals did not react with such overt anger, but Virim sensed it nonetheless. Heartened, he continued.

“But I am here to offer the Beasts an alternative.” Virim gestured to the slash marks on the piece of wood. “I will not argue that individually most of you are more than a match for any human.”

He paused, cleared his throat, looked apologetic, then wondered if he was wasting effort on such gestures. How well did Beasts read human body language?

“That is, humans are no match unless the human is armed with a bow and arrows. Then even a wolf or puma would be endangered. Several shafts might be needed to fell a bear, but there are many bows, and many, many arrows—not only here in the New World, but in the Old World, ready to be imported at need. And surely your peoples remember that bows and arrows, spears and swords, are only the least of the weapons that humans can muster to their need.”

From the rippling of fur and feathers, the gaping of beaks and showing of fangs, the Beasts surely did remember.

“Those weapons have only become more powerful in the years that have passed. In those early days, the spellcasters had limited resources upon which they could draw. I assure you, that is no longer the case. If it comes to battle between you and them, this time there will be no limit; there will be no need to retreat.”