Wolf's Blood (73 page)

“Hey, Derian,” called Chaker as he guided the vessel to the mooring and helped his son make it fast to the pilings. “Can you come aboard and help take this …”

He paused as if searching for some other word, then shrugged and settled for the most obvious. “ … sheep ashore. Firekeeper carried it on, but I think she’s going to have enough trouble getting herself off the boat.”

Firekeeper didn’t argue against this assessment, but only looked more miserable than before.

“Sheep?” Derian said, but he was already moving down the dock. He stopped as the peregrine took to the air and began gliding in circles over his head. “Elation?”

To Plik’s surprise the young man’s voice actually broke.

“Fierce Joy in Flight? That can’t be you!”

The falcon gave a mocking cry, then an almost cooing mewling sound. Derian seemed to recognize a familiar voice. He beamed, then his face darkened with anger.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you know the risks you’re taking? Did those fool wolves forget to tell you?”

Plik took it upon himself to translate the falcon’s reply, for Firekeeper was struggling to get off the fishing boat, and had no energy to spare.

“Elation says that they did tell her, but when she had the choice of golden eagles and gyrfalcons or an illness that she is certain will not dare touch her, she decided to choose to come. A good thing she did, too, or else those fool wolves would be howling on an island and hoping the wind would carry their cries.”

Some of the anger faded from Derian’s face to be replaced by worry. He nodded thanks to Plik for the translation.

“I see—or rather, I don’t see. but I suspect I will. Here, Firekeeper, let me get you to shore, then I’ll come back for …”

He had reached the fishing boat by now and gotten his first clear look at what Blind Seer still guarded.

“It is a sheep. A mountain sheep. Look at those horns! Look at those hooves! Ynamynet, come look at this. It’s just like Virim’s emblem.”

Ynamynet had been standing back from where the ocean water might splash her, but now she worked her way down the dock, sidestepping where Derian was half carrying a very seasick Firekeeper to shore.

The Once Dead bit down on one fingertip, drawing a drop of blood from a barely healed scab. Then she traced a pattern in the air with both her fingertips.

“I can see why you’ve bound this sheep with iron wire,” she said to Firekeeper and Blind Seer. “Even so bound the power it radiates is blinding.”

She apparently meant this literally, for Plik noted that she was pulling her head back and squinting as if to protect herself from glare. Plik found this interesting. Like most of the maimalodalum. he had possessed a talent for sensing magic, but in his case the sense most closely related had been sound.

Querinalo had robbed him of all that talent—or so he had thought. Now, as he reflexively opened those “ears” to try and hear what Ynamynet—very much a sight-oriented human—had “seen,” he thought he heard a rhythmic pounding. If it wasn’t simply wishful imaginings on his part, then the sheep must possess a considerable amount of power for Plik to be able to sense it at all.

Once on shore and collapsed on the prickly grass, Firekeeper continued to hold on to the ground as if feeling a latent tossing. Even so, she must have been feeling better, for she ventured her first comment since the boat’s arrival.

“Is not just sheep, is Virim. Not Virim emblem. Virim. Take care.”

Ynamynet glanced at Firekeeper, but there was not the least hint of disbelief in her assessing gaze.

“Is it then?” she said. “But from how you have him bound, I do not think you have convinced him to be a member of your pack.”

Firekeeper shook her head. From how her hand flew to her temple, she obviously regretted the motion.

“Not all of him, no. When Derian has on shore, Blind Seer and I try to tell. First, please, tell us. The invasion. How far?”

“How far?” Derian repeated, his voice showing none of the strain of the weight of the large creature he was now bearing to shore. “You sound like you know something about it. When you left, we didn’t know for certain what would happen.”

“Meddler tell,” Firekeeper said tersely, and Plik didn’t think the shortness of her speech was related to her nausea. There was a tenseness about both her and Blind Seer that hinted at something far more complex.

Ynamynet didn’t seem to realize this, for she said, “The Meddler told you and you believed him?”

“Meddler show,” Firekeeper said. “In dream. Ships. Troops. Is a lie?”

This last statement sounded so hopeful that Plik hated to reply.

“No,” he said. “It’s not a lie. There is a fleet coming. We expect it in a few days. It will probably try and land during the dark of early Bear Moon.”

Blind Seer said,
“Then we have some time yet. Puma Moon was thin but visible when we went into Virim’s fortress.”

Plik recalled the moon as he had seen it the night before. It had been so slim as to be the merest crescent. Tonight it would be dark. He said this, and Blind Seer, who was ashore now and sitting beside Firekeeper, wrinkled his brow in the expression for worry that canines shared so oddly with humans.

“I could swear that it was slim, but still giving light when we went into Virim’s fort. Does the moon shine differently in different places?”

“I don’t think so,” Firekeeper said in Pellish. “I recall it was the same in New Kelvin when we arrived there as it had been here when we left.”

Plik made a quick translation of Blind Seer’s comments for Derian and Ynamynet, both of whom had looked quite started at Firekeeper’s—to them—strange comment.

“Strange indeed,” Ynamynet agreed, “but perhaps we will find an answer when you have told your story. First, though, where do you think we should keep your guest?”

“Virim,” Firekeeper said. She put her hand on Blind Seer’s shoulder and pushed herself to her feet. “Virim. Do not forget. Virim. The Virim who make the Plague.”

“I promise,” Ynamynet said. “My spell is spent, but I saw the glow of his power with my own eyes. I will not forget and think him a mere mountain sheep.”

Derian looked down at the limp creature he still held in his arms. “As if we could. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mountain sheep with horns of diamond and golden hooves.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mountain sheep,” Plik said, “but I get your point.”

Firekeeper had been considering Ynamynet’s question, and now she spoke. “He is human as well as beast, but now he is mostly beast. Maybe open is better, and Blind Seer and I can watch him.”

“Open is easier to run away from,” Ynamynet reminded her.

“Is island,” Firekeeper said with a shrug. “Where to he run?”

“Where can any of us run?” Derian said grimly. “That is the problem, isn’t it?”

“Is maybe solution, too,” Firekeeper said with confidence. “So I hope. Let us go to place by Derian’s house. We can talk outside.”

Derian agreed and turned his steps in that direction.

Firekeeper turned to Ynamynet. “You say you see Virim power with spell. Is iron wire really doing anything to stop this one?”

“It is hampering him some,” Ynamynet said. “There were darker areas where the wire touched. However, I suspect the physical restriction is almost as much a difficulty.”

“How much iron to really stop him?” Firekeeper asked.

Ynamynet gave an involuntary shudder. Plik recalled that she herself had experienced a probationary period where she wore iron to restrict her from easy use of her power.

“Really stop? I don’t know. I have never seen such power.”

“Would heavy collar do?” Firekeeper persisted, not permitting Ynamynet to avoid the distasteful subject. “I wish him to walk about with me and see these Nexans.”

“A heavy collar might work,” Ynamynet said, “but I think that much iron that close to the head might make him nauseous. It would certainly give him a throbbing headache. I would suggest if you want him at all alert that you employ bracelets and maybe a light necklace.”

“We do this then,” Firekeeper said, pulling loops of iron wire from a bag at her waist. “Will trouble you if I do with you near?”

“Not if it doesn’t touch me,” Ynamynet said.

They had reached Derian’s house now. Derian set the mountain sheep down, then went inside and brought out chairs, setting one in the brightest patch of sunlight and motioning Ynamynet toward it.

When he took his own chair, the falcon Elation seated herself on the back and nuzzled his hair with gentle affection. Here, at least, was one old friend Derian didn’t need to worry would be offended by his transformed appearance.

Firekeeper, now seemingly recovered from her seasickness, sat on the ground next to the sheep. As she altered the wire hobbles into the bracelets Ynamynet had suggested, she began to tell what had happened. Blind Seer interjected periodically, and Plik found himself translating automatically.

Sometime during Firekeeper’s account, the jaguar Truth arrived. She seated herself without comment in the sun near Ynamynet. Zebel, the Twice Dead who was the Nexans’ doctor, came soon after Truth. Like the jaguar, he did nothing to interrupt, only seated himself on a vacant chair and listened with rapt attention.

“So,” Firekeeper concluded, “is how is. Think that Virim is not all happy with his making querinalo, but is not all unhappy either. One thing I do think. He likes living. So I bring him here. I think if he not help us, then he can die with us.”

Plik saw the mountain sheep give a very human wince at this, but otherwise it offered no comment. From the expression on Ynamynet’s face. she had seen the reaction as well, but she copied the old spellcaster’s reticence, and commented on something else entirely.

“I think I know what happened to your missing days,” Ynamynet said. “Time passes very strangely when one is thinking. I suspect that what you took for a few hours within Virim’s stronghold were actually days—days of confused thought on his part while you worked yourselves through to some sort of clarity. Someone with a less determined nature might have been permanently trapped. I compliment you three on escaping at all.”

“Escaping,” Derian said, looking out over the ocean where the unseen fleet was inexorably approaching, “to die with us.”

“To fight, then to die.” Firekeeper said, as if that made a difference. Plik thought that to a wolf it probably did. “And maybe, just maybe, to live.”

AS PLEASED AS Derian was to have Firekeeper and Blind Seer back, what they had discovered on their journey had not precisely solved the near impossibility of how the Nexans could hold the islands against the invading fleet.

In the day or so since he had been brought to the Nexus Islands, the mountain sheep had wandered from place to place on the island. It was never alone. Two of the yarimaimalom wolves always were with it. During the day, True Star, an older woman who was one of the remaining Once Dead, joined Virim’s escort. True Star possessed an unerring sense for which way north lay, a minor talent that might have been considered more important were she on the mainland, but was nearly useless on the restricted island where she had lived the latter part of her life.

However slight her talent, True Star was very familiar with the ways of spellcasters, and had assured them that should Virim attempt anything, she would know. Given that neither Ynamynet nor Kalyndra could be spared, and that the talents of the remaining Once Dead, Frostweed and Arasan, could be used elsewhere, and that someone other than the wolves should be with Virim, True Star was delegated.

Certainly, Firekeeper could not be spared. Almost as soon as she arrived she was off again, this time to scour the forests on the mainland, bringing word to the remnants of the formerly captive yarimaimalom that their help would be needed to defend the Nexus Islands. Word had been sent earlier, but Derian did not doubt that Firekeeper and Blind Seer would succeed in using guilt and obligation to balance the fear those yarimaimalom would doubtless feel at the idea of returning where they had been so cruelly treated.

But even if Firekeeper brought back every wolf, puma, raccoon, and eagle, Derian feared it still wouldn’t be enough.

“What we need,” he said to Isende as they made what had now become their joint patrol of the gateway hilltop, “are those sea monsters I heard about when we first came here. Then the ships couldn’t get safely to shore. I don’t suppose you could find me one or two?”

Isende, who had proven very good at finding odds and ends stored in the various buildings, shook her head.

“I wish. I know Ynamynet has been trying to find out if there was ever any truth to those stories, but she has had no success. She’s wearing herself out trying to decide what spells she and Kalyndra could work that might make a difference. The problem is, although they’re our two most powerful spellcasters …”

“Our only two spellcasters …” Derian interrupted, trying to be playful. He was surprised to see a very odd look cross Isende’s face.

“Actually,” she said, then stopped. She took a deep breath and started again. “Actually, Kalyndra thinks I have a spellcaster’s ability, not just some vague talent for seeing visions.”

Derian felt an automatic protest rising to his lips. After all, where he’d been raised what Isende was admitting to would have been considered worse—or at least as bad—as admitting to a taste for cannibalism. He stilled the protest, thinking that now, when they needed whatever edge they could find, was not the time to make Isende nervous about exploring whatever potentials she possessed.

“Now that I think of it,” he said, “there’s a certain logic in what Kalyndra thinks. I tend to forget that you and Tiniel worked the spell that permitted you to open the gate back in the Setting Sun stronghold. At that time, we knew so little about how the gates worked—or about how magic works in general—it didn’t occur to me to question that you and Tiniel could have simply followed some instructions you found cached beneath a floorboard.”

“But now,” Isende said, “you do know—and so do I. If one or both of us hadn’t possessed a talent for spellcasting, then we could have followed those instructions letter-perfect until we’d bled ourselves dry and the gate would not have opened.”