Wolf's Blood (89 page)

“I held a little in reserve though, and since you have never let me out of your sight for very long, I had ample opportunity to work a spell that would let me control your body.”

He gave one of those annoyingly engaging smiles.

“Well, ‘control’ is probably overstating the matter just a bit. I can keep you from moving, even more than I am doing now. I could stop you from any motion at all.”

Firekeeper didn’t need him to explain what a deadly threat that was. There were insects and snakes whose venom paralyzed their prey. The creatures suffocated. Even if he let her continue breathing, he could rob her of the ability to swallow, and her spit would run from her mouth or maybe even choke her.

She blinked, and thought how soon her eyes would begin to burn if even that little motion was taken from her.

However, she couldn’t bring herself to speak, and after a long and thoughtful pause the Meddler went on.

“It’s for your own good. I hope you realize that. I can’t bear the idea of you throwing yourself away leading the fight against the invaders. I want to save you, to protect you. Surely, you understand that I cannot let the woman I love go into such terrible danger—not when I have it in my power to prevent her.”

“So,” Firekeeper said, “what you do? Keep me like this forever? I tell you, if you free me, I go to them, even if I must run all the way to New Kelvin to find a gate.”

“And what good would that do you?” the Meddler asked. “You could not open it.”

“Maybe I run to Setting Sun stronghold,” Firekeeper said. “Maybe among the yarimaimalom is one like Enigma or Blind Seer who can work the magic. I remember the spell.”

“Stubborn,” the Meddler said, “and in any case, you would be too late.”

“I will not abandon my pack, not until I am sure.”

“Don’t wolves surrender when they are beaten?” the Meddler said in exasperation. “You keep claiming you are a wolf. Act like one.”

“I am not beaten,” Firekeeper said softly. “Why you think that I am?”

“You cannot move,” the Meddler protested. “I could kill you with a gesture. How is it that you are not beaten?”

For a moment, Firekeeper wished that she had decided to pretend to be beaten. When the spell was broken and she could move again, then she could have attacked the Meddler. There was no law against attacking once one had surrendered, only that the surrender be true.

She suspected, though, that the Meddler would expect some such trick from her. Humans were full of them, so full that they had many, many words for them. Gambit, contrivance, trick, subterfuge, lie.

This creature standing before her in the shape of Virim was a master of tricks, but more than once his own tricks had turned against him. For now, she would not surrender, and she would find a way to win herself free.

“I not understand,” she said into the silence that stretched between them, “why you do this. You promise to help me.”

“I am helping you,” the Meddler said. “What could be more helpful than preserving your life?”

Firekeeper blinked at him. There it was again, that insane human notion that preserving life justified any action—even the spending of the lives of others. A wolf pack would not survive a winter if the Ones thought that way. True, to a human observer, it might seem that the Ones benefitted from the pack more than the pack did from the Ones, but Firekeeper, who had seen how the strength of the Ones was the strength of the pack, who knew how weak a pack would be if every female bore pups every spring, knew that the Ones gave much for being first at every kill and the only ones to breed.

I have thought myself a One,
she thought frantically.
I owe my pack for what they have given me.

Her blood had done this, her blood and her own shortsighted impulsive desire to solve a problem. When they had first come to the Nexus Islands, she had witnessed how Tiniel and Isende had been controlled against their will by spells laid in their blood. She had frequently heard how reluctant the Nexans were to give blood to power spells that would otherwise benefit them from the fear that some would be held back to be used against them.

And then I give the Meddler access to my blood—lots of my blood—with no thought but that he could use it to solve an immediate problem.

Something in that thought rang less than true to her, and had Firekeeper already not been able to move, she would have frozen in her tracks to think the matter over.

Wait. Was I so foolish? I am not usually so foolish. The Meddler has control of my body. Might he have inserted a little bit of control into my thoughts as well?

She had seen this done before, and now that the idea had come to her, it seemed very likely that the Meddler would not have robbed himself of such a useful tool.

What then does he not want me to remember? What little thought might betray all these careful plans?

She was oddly glad now that the Meddler had robbed her of motion, for she needed to be able to concentrate to work back through her memory. Had she been required to move about and speak and act like normal, he might have become suspicious, but now her silence would only be taken for anger.

As she might have worked through a game trail mostly obliterated by rain, the wolf-woman set herself to trail through her memories, back to that moment on the hillside when Virim had gone wild with fear for his life. He had gone wild with something else—the scent of her blood and the power it offered to work spells he might use to transform himself or defend himself.

The Meddler had spoken into her mind then, had whispered that if he had use of the blood she was so uselessly shedding he would be able to do something about Virim. She had given him that blood then, and …

Wait.

Firekeeper sniffed back along the trail … . Her memories felt as if they were engulfed in a thick rain, a rain that kept her from seeing clearly. She longed to go back to the relatively dry cave of her wrath at the Meddler.

How could he have trapped her? How could he have used her generosity against her? How could he claim to love her and do this to her?

But although that dry cave beckoned, Firekeeper had been driven out to hunt in the rain many, many times before. She was a wolf in her heart, but her human body could not go without eating for days on end as could that of a wolf. There was strength, then, in what her human body had forced her to do, and she drew on that strength now, pushing out into the driving rain, bending down to look to find the true thread of her memories.

She found it, almost obscured by puddles and mud. Now she could follow the thread back, remember what had actually been said at that time.

She had not been such a fool as she had been led to believe. Now she could remember, and it was almost as if the scene played out again in front of her.

The Meddler’s voice whispered within her mind,
“I will owe you … serve you. Help you win this war. I promise.”

Her reply, carefully thought through, despite the distraction of the battle raging on the beach below, of the pain in her arm, of the bowstring digging into her fingers.

“Promise or the blood in you will turn sour and empty as your word.”

And the Meddler’s reply, urgent, and holding a note of triumph she had not recognized then, but that rang high and true now that she knew to listen for it.

“
I promise, by the love I hold for you, by the blood you give to me, I promise.”

Firekeeper reviewed that exchange, and for a moment felt hopeless. What could she do with such words? She was no orator, never one to convince with the power of words alone. Her strengths were in action.

She felt a paralysis of spirit grip her, nearly as strong and solid as that which immobilized her limbs. Now, however, she knew the Meddler’s touch, and knew this as a diversion. She was no fool. The pup who had come over the Iron Mountains might have thought all virtue was in a quick hard bite and the rest came after, but Firekeeper had learned a great deal in the intervening years. It was her own longing for days when things had been so simple—or she had believed them to be so—that the Meddler’s magic was using to bind her into obedience.

Firekeeper snapped her teeth together, biting back a howl that would have mingled triumph and frustration, and so told the Meddler far more than she wanted him to know. Instead she shaped words and was pleased when they came out as clean and decisive as any thrust of her Fang could have been.

“Meddler,” she said, “you gave me your promise.”

“My promise to protect you,” he said easily.

“No. This was your promise: to owe me, to serve me …”

He interrupted before she could finish. “And have I not paid what I owed? Didn’t I spend my energies to help raise the shield? Haven’t I served you by opening the gate and bringing you here? Haven’t I served you by protecting you even when you would not protect yourself?”

Firekeeper felt the driving rain of confusion sheeting over her, but she was not to be diverted from the trail this time.

“You promised to owe me, to serve me, and to help me win this war. No matter what you say about having paid what you owed and having given good service, there is no way that you can say you have helped me to win the war. No. By taking me here as you have, you have, if anything, made the loss of the war all the more certain.”

She realized that her words were far more articulate than those she usually managed to speak, and knew then that she was speaking not as much with her mouth as through the mental link the Meddler had established with her. He had meant it for his own benefit, and she had greatly resented it, but now she was glad for it, for she knew he could not escape her attack by the simple expedient of sealing her lips.

The Meddler looked startled, even shocked at this proof she had regained her memory, but when he replied, his voice held its usual sardonic confidence.

“And what if I did? You cannot hold me to that promise. What power do you have to bind me? You are no spellcaster. You are a confused young woman who is so rooted in her conviction that her heart and soul are a wolf’s that she refuses to see what a very powerful and influential human she could be.”

His tone turned pleading. “Listen to me. Come with me, Firekeeper. I will show you the many delights of being human. I will love you as you have only dreamed of being loved. I will show you potential you do not yet know you possess, potential that was robbed from you in the days when those who cared for you sought only to preserve your life.

“Had you been born in the days when I was young, someone would have recognized that part of you that forces the world around you to transform and change. You would have been inaugurated a Meddler, and found pleasure in that exclusive company. I might have been your teacher then. I can be your teacher now—your teacher and so much more.

“Come with me, and I will make you the first of a new generation of Meddlers. We will change this transformed world, and save it from the pains and sorrows that otherwise it will inflict upon itself. We will create a perfection that will benefit humans and Beasts and creatures whose existence you are only now beginning to suspect. Come with me, Firekeeper, and I will make you more than you can dream.”

Despite the fluidity of his oratory, despite the tug that came from somewhere within the blood that he had taken from her, despite the love that shone in his eyes, Firekeeper was not tempted in the least.

“You promised me,” she said levelly, “not only by the love you hold for me, but by the blood I gave to you. You promised twice, and to that promise I hold you. I do not know what this love is that you claim to have. It is like no love I have ever known, but I think it is a love I would be wise to fear. Yet although I know nothing of this love, I know my blood. You know my blood, and you have told me that it is what you have used not only to paralyze me, but to strengthen that body which you wear. Honor your promise or that blood will turn as sour and empty as your word.”

She deliberately echoed her earlier words. Panic flickered through the Meddler’s gaze, but when he spoke his voice held only a sneer.

“And how can you do this? You are no spellcaster.”

“But you are,” Firekeeper said, “and you made the promise, and that promise is linked to the magic for which you used my blood. One last time. Honor that promise and give me your aid as I choose to ask for it, not as you choose to tell me I need it. Honor that promise and set me free to live or die as I choose. Honor that promise or where my blood has mingled with your own and given fuel to the fire of your power, that power will turn to nothing, empty and hopeless as a belly filled with the acid of starvation.”

Perhaps it was through the link that he had opened between her mind and his own, but Firekeeper felt the tremor that ran through the Meddler when she raised her challenge. She knew then that, no matter how hard he might strive to deny it, she could do to him exactly what she had threatened. He had some power of his own, but she doubted that he had built too great a reserve in the few hours that he had controlled a corporeal form.

Most of his power must have its roots in what Virim had stored away and what he had taken from her. Since her power was what gave the Meddler access to Virim’s, should he lose hers, he would lose what remained of Virim’s as well. He would probably be a spirit once more, losing his tie to the body he so desperately wanted.

The Meddler stood tall and straight, gaze locked with her own, pale green-grey eyes meeting dark, and finding in that darkness no pity or irresolution.

Then Firekeeper felt her limbs returned to her own control, and her joy was so great that she longed to dance and howl as might a young wolf in all her strength. She did not though, but moved toward the door.

“We’ve wasted enough time,” she said. “Come. We speak to the Bound, then hurry back.”

The Meddler followed her, obedient now, and through the thread that connected them still she could feel that her defeat of him had only increased his admiration for her. She understood that. Wolves were much the same; they admired the strong and honored those who defeated them.