Wolf's Blood (44 page)

Virim paused, and this time, although he could understand nothing of it, he was aware of a sense that conversation was happening around him. Finally, the raven flapped forward a few paces and croaked.

“What?”

“What can we do?” Virim said. The raven made no further comment, but stared at him with bright, intelligent eyes. Virim went on. “I said I had an alternative to offer. My alternative is that you Beasts join forces with me and with those sorcerers I have convinced to see the justice of my cause—of your cause. We will defeat the other sorcerers for you, driving them from the New World entirely, perhaps from the face of the Earth. In return, we ask that you defend us while we do this, for we will be vulnerable. We ask that this protection not only extend during the time that we engage your enemies, but afterwards. We know all too well that when only we few remain, then we will be vulnerable to attack not only from humans, but from the very Beasts whom we have chosen to champion.”

The raven raised the feathers on its head into odd little horns, then puffed out the feathers on its neck, making itself into a comical parody of one of the beasts of prey, a wolf, perhaps. Virim didn’t know what to make of this display, but he nodded as if he did. Again he had the sense that the Beasts were talking among themselves, even arguing heatedly. He kept his silence, aware that the time for words on his part was past. He had offered himself to the Beasts. Would the Beasts accept him or reject him out of hand?

At last the raven turned its attention back to Virim. It puffed its feathers, especially those on its head, making a variety of grotesque shapes that Virim—for all his love of nature and the natural world—had never known were possible. At last the raven, perhaps frustrated by its limited vocabulary, began bobbing up and down.

Virim thought,
I need to say something. “What?” and “Why?” are hardly sufficient to answer the complicated issue I have raised.

“You have conferred then?” he asked.

The raven ceased its agitated feather molding and croaked a sound rather like “Yes.”

“Will you accept my offer?”

The raven began raising and lowering feathers again. Virim shook himself from fascinated observation with an effort.

“I think I understand. The matter is not that simple. Do you need an opportunity to confer with those you represent?”

“Yes,” came the croak, more distinct this time.

“Will one day be enough?”

“No.”

“Three days?”

The raven turned and faced the other Beasts. The bear grumbled and scratched. The wolf shook as if ridding itself of excess water.

“No,” the raven said to Virim.

“By the next full moon?” That would give these ambassadors nearly a full moonspan to speak with their constituents.

The raven consulted his fellows, then looked at Virim.

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. I will do my best to delay any catastrophe during that time,” Virim said, “but I cannot promise.”

Humans might have offered him some thanks, but the Beasts did not wait upon such formalities. Almost before Virim finished speaking they had melted one by one into the surrounding forest, the winged ones rising into the air and becoming motes among the blue.

Virim considered what he had done, stroking the tangles from his beard. Then he too returned to his people, feeling some relief that he would be able to speak and to be spoken to in return.

WHEN ELATION FINISHED her narration, Blind Seer said, “And we know what the Beasts replied. They accepted Virim’s proposal, and so the Plague was released into the New World and spread into the Old as well.”

“But Beasts accepting the aid of humans!” Firekeeper protested. “Accepting the aid of sorcerers! I can’t believe it.”

“So the buck said when the puma dropped onto his back,” Blind Seer retorted. “Belief makes no difference. What has happened, has happened. Only humans believe that refusing to believe in what they know must be true will change reality.”

Firekeeper was instantly humbled. “You are right. I don’t want to believe it, but Elation would not lie to us.”

“Perhaps I believed more easily,” Blind Seer said kindly, licking her arm, “because of what my nose showed me when we scouted earlier. I found scent trails for many Beasts, oddly overlapping in ways that do not usually happen in the natural course of events. I also found the scent trails of at least one human as well, so close in time and place to those of the Beasts that they must have been in company. I was disturbed, but not as disturbed as I would have been before we encountered the Liglimom and the yarimaimalom. We cannot deny that there are fruitful partnerships between humans and Beasts.”

Elation squawked with something like her usual contemptuous derision. “I would have thought you could have known this without flying days and days to the far south, and meeting with strange peoples. The pair of you is proof enough for these eyes that Beasts and humans can work as one.”

Firekeeper was so overwhelmed by all she had learned that she did not even feel the urge to protest that she was wolf, not human. Right now if someone had told her she was a field mouse, she would have checked for a long bare tail trailing behind her before denying the possibility.

“Then the Beasts of a hundred and more years ago made a pact with Virim and his allies, and in return Virim and his allies released the Plague. Very well. I accept that. If that is true, then other things follow. The eagle that chased you. that was no mere rivalry between the rulers of the air. that was something more.”

“You see clearly now,” Elation agreed. “That was something more indeed. That golden eagle belongs to a flock that has kept the pact with Virim and his followers all these long years and more. Nor are the golden eagles the only ones who do so. As the years passed, Virim lived on and on, living well beyond the usual life span of humankind.”

“We have heard that this was an art among the great sorcerers,” Firekeeper said, feeling strange that an ability so peculiar could feel now like solid ground. “The Beasts must have been greatly surprised.”

“They were,” Elation said, “and from what the Mothers of my aerie told when news of your search came to our hearing, those Beasts had learned to live with unpleasant surprises.”

“It does not take this nose and these ears,” Blind Seer said, “to guess that not all the Royal Beasts were delighted with the pact that had been made in their name.”

“Good stalking,” Elation agreed. “You have soared true. Less than a full moonspan was time for the Beasts whom Virim had contacted to speak with many who lived near, but certainly not to achieve congress or accord among all the packs and flocks and herds. It was far from enough time to seek those who thrive in isolation. Yet, during the time over which the moon changed her face, something happened that made the northwestern Beasts feel they must accept Virim’s offer, even if their fellows did not.”

“Humans began their attack,” Firekeeper said, as certain as if she had seen it happen.

“True flown,” Elation said. “And the attack came through a pass in these northern mountains, so the Beasts in this region felt themselves greatly threatened.”

“I wonder,” Blind Seer mused, “if Virim’s presence had anything to do with prompting that attack?”

“I do not know,” Elation said, “but from what I know of humans, I would not deny the possibility—or even overlook the possibility that Virim himself did something to encourage what happened.”

Firekeeper nodded, “Either he could have done something to make his pack mates wish to pursue him, or they simply could have been trying to cut him off before he ran free of their reach. The results would have been much the same. The Beasts would have seen themselves threatened as Virim had predicted they would be threatened, and so would have made a pact with him.”

Blind Seer shuddered, “And what a pact. Those of their kin who live today must have served Virim and his kind for so long that they must hardly know there is another way to live.”

Elation twisted and preened her shoulder feathers. “And not only them. Others have served that cause, if rather more indirectly. That service is why I am here.”

Firekeeper stiffened, but she kept her manners polite as she asked, “Having you with us again seemed as natural as sunrise. I almost forgot how very strange it was. You said you had flown here so that we might not be slain by those we think of as kin. I understand, now. You mean these Beasts who have made pact with Virim.”

“That is so,” Elation said.

Blind Seer’s hackles had risen. “But from what you said, about having done so following your own impulse, not all the Royal Beasts agreed we should be warned. What have we done to earn such enmity?”

“I will not deny,” Elation replied, “that there are those among the Royal Beasts who dislike how you and Firekeeper have comported yourselves since you went east. You have become a power in yourselves, one with influence all out of proportion to your numbers. Nor have you proven loyalty to those who reared you. Rather you have shown a disturbing tendency to make decisions for yourselves.

“However, that is not the main reason why, when the Royal Beasts near whom I dwelled received word of what you two intended, that they decided that perhaps the best course of action was no action at all—neither to attempt to warn you about what you might encounter, nor to send any to stop you. Why they decided this, as I saw it as I sat amid those joined in council, was that they feared Virim, and what Virim might do in retaliation.”

Neither Firekeeper nor Blind Seer asked what the Beasts had feared. They knew all too well the old legends. Even more, they knew the lingering reality of Old World magic. Moreover, this Virim and those who dwelled with him were no Once Dead; they were not semi-trained, and nor were they seared by querinalo, kept from full use of their dubious gifts. They were the last of the Old World sorcerers themselves, the last remnant of a power that had kept all the world in thrall.

Thinking of this, Firekeeper said very softly. “I can hardly blame the Royal Beasts for their fear, but I am grateful that you, at least, had courage to act against that course. But now that we are warned, what is your intent? Do you hope that your warning will stop us from what we are here to do?”

Elation shrieked a falcon’s laugh. “As if I could! No, Firekeeper, I wish you and Blind Seer to do what rumor told us you hoped to do.”

“You wish us to find the source of the Plague?” Blind Seer said. “Why should it matter to you?”

Elation slicked her feathers tight and flat. “I care little about the Plague, as such, but I care very much about an Old World sorcerer living this close to where my chicks are finding their wings. I do not consider myself terribly imaginative, but the same ones who told us of your journeys and what you had learned during them told us of the Once Dead, grown into magical power despite the Plague.

“Peregrine are not as territorial as wolves, but even so we do not like others who would take our nests. Virim must know of these budding rivals. I have ridden hot currents of thought, considering what may happen when Virim concludes that these Once Dead have flown too high. Nor am I among those who thinks Virim will continue to honor his treaty with Royal-kind forever. We hear that querinalo struck even Beasts who crossed into the Old World. How long before he releases it, or something worse, into the New?”

“So you are with us,” Blind Seer said.

“I am with you and above you,” Elation assured him. “I am your eyes above the trees. My beak and talons will fight even my own nestlings if that would be needed. What knowledge I have hunted down is yours, but as to what three such as we can do against one such as Virim, even forgetting that he has humans and Beasts alike who serve him, as to this, I can offer no answers.”

Firekeeper reached out and scratched Blind Seer between his ears.

“We have learned a great deal about humans,” she said thoughtfully, “in the years since we ran with you holding the skies above us. Once I would have thought that we would need to go and dig this Virim from his lair as a wolverine digs after a rabbit. Now, though, now I wonder if the hunting will go both ways.”

“Why would Virim hunt you?” Elation asked. “He is safe in his lair. Beasts vowed to his protection roamed this forest, and if he so ordered, they would hunt you as the golden eagle hunted me. You drove off the eagle, but could you drive off a wolf pack? Could you defeat even a single bear?”

Firekeeper shrugged. “Blind Seer and I might fight better than you imagine. I am far stronger than when I first learned to pull a bow, and my arrows drive very deep. Blind Seer has fought some strange battles as well. But I do not think we will find ourselves fighting Virim’s lackeys, at least not at first. I think he will wish to observe us.”

Elation made a scornful sound, and Firekeeper grinned. Blind Seer scratched at one ear, then addressed the falcon.

“Humans,” Blind Seer said pedantically, “as you may have noticed, are equipped with something far more deadly than claws or fangs or talons. They are plagued with curiosity. When this bites into them, they are no better than puppies. A pup will fall into a river giving battle to his reflection—no matter that he is told what will happen. So it is with a human bitten with curiosity. They will risk themselves to satisfy it.”

Elation cocked her head, focusing on Firekeeper in amusement. “You do not growl at this assessment as once you might have, Firekeeper.”

“I could say,” Firekeeper replied, “that this is because I am a wolf. and Blind Seer is not speaking of me, but that would be less than honest. I do not growl because what Blind Seer says is true. I think that curiosity—either that of Virim, or of one of those humans who is allied with him—will cause them to hold their hand from us, at least for a while.”

Elation almost cooed, a strange sound from so fierce a falcon. “There is a great deal about which one might be curious in regard to the two of you. Sometimes I forget how very strange the wolf-woman would be to one who has not had the dubious pleasure of observing her firsthand.”