Wolf's Blood (71 page)

The edges of the mountain sheep grew blurred, as if it was attempting to change into something else. Then the lines became hard and firm again. However, Firekeeper was certain she had not imagined what she had seen. For one, the thin trickle of blood from where Blind Seer had held the mountain sheep’s hind legs between his jaws had stopped and the wound was healed.

Useful,
she thought, but said nothing aloud.

“It hurts,” the sheep bleated in that plaintive voice. “The iron hurts.”

“Does it?” Firekeeper said. “I’d like to believe you so easily bound, Virim, but I note that your legs bear no sign of the blisters that Bruck carried upon him. Mother birds limp and flutter their wings to lead hunters away from their nests. I think you need to do better than that.”

She had strung her bow as she spoke, and now she set an iron-headed arrow to the string.

“I do not know whether or not iron wire can harm you, but I feel certain that an iron arrowhead might provide a more serious inconvenience.”

The mountain sheep’s eyes flew open, and Firekeeper noted that they held a certain shrewdness of expression.

“But you want me. alive,” Virim said. “Would you shoot me?”

“I might,” Firekeeper said, keeping her tone completely conversational. “I admit. There was a time I wanted you alive so that I might learn from you the solution to querinalo. Since then, I have learned a few things, and those have given me reason for thought.”

“Oh?” the sheep said. “Do you mind if move? It’s difficult to see anything but the ceiling from this position.”

“Move,” Firekeeper said, “but I suggest you restrict your movements. I have had a long day, and if I am startled I think my arrow would loose.”

The mountain sheep struggled awkwardly to lie upright, legs folded beneath as they would at rest, but whether because it took Firekeeper’s threat seriously, or because of some ulterior motive, it did not attempt anything else.

As it settled itself, Firekeeper said, “Would you like to hear my new thoughts?”

“Certainly.”

“Since coming here, we have confirmed that querinalo shares more in nature with a curse than with a true illness. Now, I know very little about curses, and most of what I know comes from the stories I have heard about the days before querinalo. I admit, my knowledge may be flawed. However, there was one thing about curses that stayed with me. Curses tend to have a focus of some sort. In some stories that focus is on a family, in others on an item, in others on a place. Querinalo is an impressive curse in that its focus is on a large group—so large that I nearly missed something important.”

Virim said nothing, but Blind Seer answered her: “The focus of this curse has changed. Initially, it struck those in the New World as hard as it did those in the Old. Now it strikes only those in the Old World.”

Firekeeper nodded. “From Bruck—a part of you who I think expresses a good number of your doubts about what you have done—we learned how the magical power the curse took from its victims was used to make Virim and his minions immortal. I didn’t think of the obvious question at the time.”

Again Blind Seer filled the gap left by Virim’s stubborn silence. “What would happen to the immortality Virim had gained if powerful magic completely vanished from the world? Would he have the means to retain his life, or would he be condemned to death?”

Firekeeper smiled, and relaxed tension on her bow just a bit. It wouldn’t do to stress the string so it would snap just when she needed it.

“Exactly. It seems to me very convenient that querinalo mutated to permit those with magical power to live, to breed. And to provide the next generation whose sufferings would give Virim his hold on life.”

Virim stirred, and Firekeeper raised her arrow’s tip. He hastened to reassure her.

“I am not going to do anything, but I want you to know, it wasn’t like that. Not really. Not hardly. I wanted to see if a later generation would handle magic more responsibly than had those I had been forced to destroy. I hadn’t counted on the reaction of the non-magical, nor the attitude of persecution and privilege that would create.”

“I wish I believed that,” Firekeeper said. She unstrung her bow and set it beside her. “I am strong, but my arms do get tired. However, I am very good at throwing a knife and I think a steel blade would do you no good.”

She settled herself, her Fang held in a throwing grip.

“I wonder if managing querinalo was much the same for you. At first you could maintain your curse in all its horrid and glorious power. After a time, however, as the power that came to you from those you killed ebbed, you must have grown tired. You were caught between needs: to adhere to your ideals, to survive, to maintain your hold over those whose friends and families you had tormented and destroyed.”

Virim did not protest. How could he, given that they had seen him deep in argument with himself? Firekeeper continued.

“So you changed the curse permitting it to give you those to prey upon while not letting them rise to such power that they could be a danger to you. Is that so?”

Virim did not reply, and Firekeeper gave a hard, dry laugh.

“Silence will serve you only so well,” she said. “You see, I have a suspicion about your role in the curse. I think you remain integral to it, adapting it as you need so that it may serve you as you wish. That means that I don’t need you to lift the curse. I can do it myself.”

Virim’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared in ovine panic.

“How could you do that?”

“By killing you,” Firekeeper said. “I think that would lift the curse. Therefore, you have a new dilemma. Rather than being a badger safe in a den constructed from my need for you, you now find yourself a grazing fawn caught in a thicket. There is a way out, but you must find it.”

“Oh?” The word emerged as a flat bleat.

“That’s right,” Firekeeper said. “My needs will be served—or so I think—by your death. Now, you must convince me why I should leave you alive.”

“Killing me will not end querinalo,” Virim said.

“And why should I believe that?” Firekeeper replied. “But I have no desire to argue with you. You have spent a hundred years and more arguing with yourself. I noticed how danger to your life began to make the finer points of that argument seem unimportant. That makes me think my intention to take you with me to the Nexus Islands is a good one.”

“Where?”

“The Nexus Islands,” Firekeeper repeated with a degree of satisfaction. “I think that you deserve to experience some of the danger you have placed others in. Perhaps it will help you to concentrate your mind.”

“You cannot pass the Bound,” Virim said, but Firekeeper could tell this was only bluster.

“We will not need to do so,” she said, but chose not to explain further. Instead she turned to Elation. “Can you guard him alone?”

In reply, the peregrine flew down and perched on one of the mountain sheep’s great, curling horns.

“If this one values his eyes, I think I can.”

Virim’s involuntary pressing closed his eyelids was answer enough.

“If he does not behave,” Firekeeper said, “Blind Seer and I will drag him after us. He will not be comfortable, but he will also not be in a position to do mischief.”

“You are so cruel,” Virim bleated.

“You have killed thousands,” Firekeeper replied. “I am trying to save many lives. If that means you must bear a little rough handling, well, so it must be.”

Without further comment, Firekeeper and Blind Seer moved to inspect the doors that lined the curving back wall. Even when viewed from up close, they seemed identical. Moreover, none showed evidence of lock or key. Firekeeper tried to pry one open with the tips of her fingers, then the point of her Fang, but she might as well have been trying to pry up a shaft of sunlight.

The wolf-woman was frustrated. She didn’t want to resort to threatening Virim to gain everything she wanted. She knew that eventually one of those threats would need to be carried out, and she preferred to reserve such tactics.

Doors without handles or hinges,
she thought.
If they are magical in nature there is nothing I can do, but such seems unnecessarily complex.

“Firekeeper?”

The voice was the Meddler’s. Firekeeper glanced around looking for him, then realized the voice was within her head.

“What?” she said aloud, then shaped a speaking thought:
“Why don’t you show yourself?”

“I would prefer not to,”
the Meddler said.
“You have left Virim’s mind and are back within what you think of as reality. I do not wish to waste all my strength manifesting just so Blind Seer can growl at me.”

“What do you want?”
she asked, trying not to be either too rude or too inviting.

“I have been searching this place. You were right. There is a gate here. You just need to get through the door at the far end of the wall.”

Firekeeper felt encouraged. She also suspected that the Meddler was about to offer to open the door for her. Not wanting to be in his debt, she considered her options again. If the door was a magical door, could Blind Seer make some spell to open it? She doubted that. Neither of them had ever seen such done.

A locked door. She supposed she might be able to break it down, but she didn’t know how long that would take, especially with the limited tools she had at hand.

A locked door. Humans usually made keys to open locks, but these doors lacked keyholes. Perhaps the key here was a spell of some sort rather than a physical key. She was turning away from thoughts of keys when an impulse made her return to consider it.

Spells took time and preparation. This wall with its many doors had not been constructed for decoration, certainly. More likely it was a defense. What good was a defense one could not pass through without all manner of dancing and chanting and smearing with blood? The defender might find himself trapped on the wrong side of his wall, and from what Firekeeper had seen of Virim, she did not think he would treat his own life so lightly.

An artifact, then. Something Virim could use quickly.

She padded over to look down at the mountain sheep. It looked up at her with the glazed placidity of a human who had seen too much change too quickly. Beasts got that look only when they had given up and were prepared to die. Somehow Firekeeper didn’t thing Virim had given up. He was probably arguing with himself again.

Elation looked quizzically at the wolf-woman, but Firekeeper didn’t offer an explanation for her return. Instead, she knelt next to the mountain sheep. Almost immediately, she felt Blind Seer warm beside her, ready to defend her should she do anything to make herself vulnerable.

“What are you doing?”

“The Meddler told me that there is a gate. It’s at the end of the line of doors, over near where you were sniffing.”

“I smelled nothing different there, but it is possible. How are we going to get through that door?”

“With the key,” Firekeeper said.

She began patting the mountain sheep, starting near the head. Elation flapped to her shoulder, then returned to Virim’s horn when Firekeeper moved further down the sheep’s torso. She was very thorough, but in the end she had found nothing.

Blind Seer started to lick her in sympathy, then drew back.

“You are smiling. What has the Meddler whispered now?”

“Nothing,” Firekeeper said. “I was laughing at myself for being stupid. I came to the decision that there must be a key to open the doors because I could not see Virim letting himself be trapped. But what good would a key do a mountain sheep?”

Blind Seer sat straight and scratched hard at one ear.

“Not much,” he admitted.

“A sheep lacks hands,” Firekeeper said. “It would open the door with its head. I think the key is there, perhaps in one of those sparkling horns.”

She thought she saw Virim wilt slightly, but couldn’t be sure. Impulsively, Firekeeper leapt to her feet.

“Off, Elation!” she said. “Time to go knocking on the door.”

Firekeeper half expected Virim to change shape when she grasped him by the horns and began dragging him across the highly polished floor. He did not. Maybe the iron wire was inhibiting him. Maybe he was simply being stubborn.

Once they had reached the door, Firekeeper knelt and gripped the sheep firmly around its midsection. The sheep was quite heavy, and his barrel very round, but she adjusted her grip until she felt secure. Then, raising the sheep until its head was about level with where it would hit when the animal was standing, she tapped the horns against the door.

One tap was not enough. Nor was two, but on the third the door swung soundlessly open revealing a chamber carved from rock that matched the garnet-seamed granite of the exterior. The room was lit by glowing blocks. Their light revealed a deep, roughly square room. On the wall to their right were the signs and sigils that Firekeeper knew marked a gate.

“There!” she said with satisfaction.

Blind Seer was in before her, leaping over Virim and landing lightly on the stone floor. Elation flew in a bit more hesitantly and took a perch on the back of a chair that, along with a small table and a neat cabinet, was the room’s only furnishing.

“Can you make the gate work?” Firekeeper asked.

“I believe so,” Blind Seer said.

He had reared onto his hind legs and was sniffing the carvings on the wall. He lapped one with his tongue, highlighting its intricate workings with saliva.

“The marks seem like those,” Blind Seer said, “I saw when I watched Enigma work the ritual Ynamynet adapted for him. We will need blood to work the spell.”

Firekeeper wrinkled her nose in distaste, but she knew the wolf was right.

“Watch Virim,” she said. “I want to block the door open, then see what that cabinet contains. I recall Ynamynet used little pots to hold the blood and brushes to mark the wall. Such may be stored here.”

“Good to have,” Blind Seer said, “but not necessary.”

The accessories were in the small cabinet, and Blind Seer directed her where to place them. The fat, round silver pots were miraculously untarnished, the bristles on the brushes unperished. Fleetingly, Firekeeper wondered if Virim had availed himself of the gate from time to time, or if some other means of preservation had been set on the tools.