Wolf's Blood (99 page)

But why I should be astonished. I don’t know. If this group is not a pack in the best and finest sense of the term, then never did a wolf pack run.

“My problem,” Firekeeper said. turning and pointing as if her words would not provide enough identification, “is the Meddler, or Virim, or maybe even a mountain sheep.”

“The Meddler foremost,” said that one with a certain insouciance, “but Virim is here as well, and even the sheep, although I must admit that I have just about defeated the urge to graze.”

“
A pity,
” Eshinarvash said. “
It is a useful ability.
”

The Meddler did not respond or react, but Plik did not doubt he had heard and understood. Plik decided that translation was not needed.

“I have no wish,” Firekeeper went on, “to have this one running at my heels for all my days, even if he could keep up. But he is too much to leave without being …”

She paused, clearly struggling for a word.

“Controlled?” Derian suggested. “Restricted? Limited?”

“Bound,” Firekeeper agreed, nodding her head in thanks. “But I not know how to make this binding or to make the promises he has made to me protect all. So I come to you, to ask. What do we do about the Meddler?”

“And how,” Derian added, “do we deal with the fact that the Meddler seems to have taken over someone else’s body. I’m not forgetting that he did us all a favor when he did so, but I’m not really comfortable with the idea.”

“Can they be separated?” Wort asked.

The Meddler faced the group and offered one of his smiles.

“If you want an insane spellcaster on your hands, yes, we can probably be separated.”

“Iron,” Skea said, “might make Virim—or you—less dangerous.”

“True,” the Meddler said, “but prolonged contact with iron is painful. Ask your wife … .”

Implicit in those last words was a warning that if one spellcaster was so chained, how long before all spellcasters were chained. It would be so easy to argue that it was a precaution for the good of the community, for the safety of the Nexans at large.

Plik saw Firekeeper rest her hand on Blind Seer’s shoulder. Here was one spellcaster who would never wear an iron collar. Who would chain Enigma? And was it fair to do to a human what one would not—or could not—do to a Beast?

Skea added, “The wearing of iron would only be for a limited time, until appropriate guidelines could be put in place.”

“Of course,” the Meddler said, lowering his eyelids and leaning back in a lazy stretch. “Of course. Until you needed a shield raised or a gate opened or some other spell worked. What you are proposing is slavery, Skea. Slavery, pure and simple.”

“What I am proposing.” Skea replied, “is defense. I do not consider myself a permanent general to these islands, but of late my thoughts have been much occupied with the question of dangers coming from outside. In the end …”

Skea paused to give Isende a look meant to reassure her that she was not to consider herself in the least to blame.

“In the end we learned that our greatest danger came from within our ranks. That same problem is what Firekeeper has brought before us today. You, Meddler, are permitting your actions to be guided by Firekeeper. How long will that last?”

“Forever, if she wishes,” the Meddler said. “Of course, she would need to give me some indication that she would return similar fidelity to me.”

Plik saw Firekeeper glower, and she looked at the Meddler.

“My blood,” she reminded him, “gave you access to Virim, but not so you could control him forever, only because he was going to get himself killed.”

“And you wanted him alive,” the Meddler said, “because he alone holds the answer to the elimination of querinalo. And I have kept him alive for you, and I have drawn on his skills for you, and now, suddenly, now that the danger is passed, everyone is thinking about poor Virim, and no one seems to feel anything but fear of the poor Meddler.”

Plik had not removed his gaze from Firekeeper, so he saw her features tighten, but she did not say a single word. It was left for Derian to ask the difficult question.

“What would happen if we asked you to leave Virim’s body?”

“Most likely,” the Meddler said, “I would continue as the sort of spirit I have been since my own body was killed. However, there is a chance that I would fade away.”

“Die?” Derian said.

“More or less,” the Meddler said. “Lose contact with this plane of existence, at least.”

“Good,” Harjeedian said, and several others who shared his religious beliefs, and who Plik knew had spent a great deal of prayer on this matter, nodded.

Plik practiced a variation of the religion of Liglim, but perhaps because he was a maimalodalu, and accustomed to tolerance of strangeness, he was less fearful of the Meddler than were his co-religionists.

“Might you,” Grateful Peace said, “find yourself trying to locate another body you might inhabit?”

“I might indeed,” the Meddler said. “I do not like being bodiless.”

“Even though as a bodiless entity you are effectively immortal?”

“Even so. Immortality is very dull when there are few with whom you can talk, and fewer who will enjoy that communication. I would rather be mortal and enjoy good meals, sleep, and even the delights of love.”

The Meddler gazed over at Firekeeper, and she visibly tensed. Blind Seer’s hackles rose, but beyond that there was no response.

Plik wondered what attracted the Meddler to Firekeeper. She was not particularly beautiful, her skin was knit with scars, and she was notoriously hard to understand. Moreover. her devotion to Blind Seer was obvious. Perhaps that was part of her attraction to the Meddler. Perhaps, though, there was something else, something Plik could never understand.

An awkward silence had followed the Meddler’s last statement, but Ynamynet’s cool voice finally broke it.

“So we have a series of problems. The matter is not only what we should do about the Meddler/Virim. it is also whether we should deal with them as one entity or two. Moreover, if we choose to deal with them as two separate people, we have two separate problems: one a spellcaster of immense ability and knowledge far beyond our modern students of the art, the other a spirit with a reputation for involving himself in the lives of others—often with the best intentions in the world, but with a tendency to overlook some complexity and so create a potential for disaster.”

Her little speech ended, she smiled a tight smile that nonetheless held more humor in it than Plik had seen for a long, long time.

“That is it, isn’t it?” Ynamynet concluded.

“Is it,” Firekeeper agreed with open admiration. “Now I know why I not figure out what to do. This is not a problem, is a nest of hibernating snakes.”

Firekeeper looked over at the Meddler/Virim. “I want to talk to Virim. I heared you and him talk before. You say he is still there. Let him come up and tell us he like where he is with you.”

The Meddler glowered at Firekeeper.

“He’s crazy, I tell you.”

“I think,” Firekeeper said, “that he is not, else you would have been quickest to let us talk to him so you could show us how much good you is doing for us. Now, let him up to talk, or by my blood that let you …”

The Meddler interrupted the wolf-woman, throwing his hand into the air with what Plik mused might just be a universal gesture of defeat.

“I know, or that blood that you gave me will sour. You charge a high price for your help, Firekeeper.”

“Is how should be,” Firekeeper said seriously. “Now, let us speak with Virim and see if he as crazy as you say.”

“Fine!” the Meddler said, and leaned back in his chair, throwing his head back to rest against the topmost slat.

There was a long, long pause, during which time Plik noted that all of the Once Dead were alert to the moving of forces which he—and most of the rest of those there assembled—was unable to sense.

He saw Ynamynet moving her hands in a slight pattern, and wondered if she was preparing some defense, just in case the Meddler had been telling the truth.

Truth had risen to her feet and stood staring at the man in the chair, her white eyes so dilated that they seemed nearly as blue as Blind Seer’s. But these were the only signs that anything was happening. The man in the chair remained so still that were it not for the signs of his breathing, Plik would have thought he had died.

At last the man in the chair stirred, then shook his head slightly as if trying to clear a mild headache. He raised a hand and stroked his beard, adjusted his posture so that he was sitting upright, and opened his eyes. They were the same eyes out of which the Meddler had looked, but somehow they were different.

Plik struggled to define why, and decided that where the Meddler’s gaze always held a trace of humor—ironic as that humor might be—these eyes, Virim’s eyes, were defined by sorrow mingled with regret and seasoned with more than a little fear. Those were the eyes that studied the assembled Nexans, closed for a moment as if needing to register the visual image, and then slowly opened again.

“You can’t really blame him,” said Virim.

His voice was very much like the Meddler’s in tone and pitch, but utterly unlike as well. It was as if a different man played the same instrument, and transformed it by the tunes he chose.

“The Meddler, I mean,” Virim continued. “He so very much wants to live, so very much wants to have a chance to interact with the world again, that even I can hardly blame him for maligning me. And his maligning was not so very much off course. He said I was crazy, implied that I was violently so. I am not violent. Despite all the deaths I have caused, I do not think I have ever been dreadfully violent. However, I think I have spent much of the last hundred years, ever since I permitted myself to contaminate what you call querinalo for my own benefit, more than a bit insane. That, however, is not what you are gathered here to decide. You are gathered here to decide what to do about two dangerous individuals: the Meddler and me.”

Firekeeper had been leaning forward as she listened, her Fang drawn and ready in her hand. Plik did not doubt that Blind Seer would alert her if Virim attempted anything magical. More important, he was certain that Virim had noticed as well.

“Would you Nexans, you who have fought so hard in these last days to preserve your homes and your lives, would you blame me if I told you that what Lwant—and what the Meddler wants—is very much the same as you? For me, I want a chance to live and to perhaps make amends for what I have done. As for the Meddler, he has told several of you himself that he wants to live again in a physical form, even with all the restrictions that implies.”

Derian spoke from the back of the gathered group.

“We’re not looking to kill you. Virim, not you or the Meddler, but you have to admit, both of you provide a problem too much like the gates for us to overlook it. We don’t want to put an end to you, but we sure don’t want to set you loose and find out what others would do with you—or what you would do yourself.”

Virim nodded solemnly and stroked his beard.

“I can understand this. I’m not even going to ask what you would do if I protested that you had no right to make such choices for others—that we are not gates to be administered. I don’t think the young woman with the knife would agree.”

He sighed, and seemed to grow smaller as he hunched forward and looked at the ground.

“And to be honest, I’m not sure that I would agree either. The days when I thought I knew the answer to life’s problems are long past. The Meddler still thinks he knows, but maybe he could benefit from an education. So I have a question for you all. Would you like to give the two of us that education?”

“Two as one?” Firekeeper said. “Or would you sit on the Meddler as he sit on you?”

Virim straightened. “Actually, I think I might be able to give the Meddler what he wants—a living body—and still keep my own intact. However, I would need your permission to do so.”

He looked over to where Zebel and Harjeedian sat.

“Doctors, do you have in your care one who, despite all your best efforts, will die?”

Zebel and Harjeedian exchanged startled glances, and then Zebel said, “We do. Arasan the Once Dead. He’s one reason Doc isn’t here with us. Arasan is fading away, sleeping more and more, and soon he’s going to simply stop breathing.”

“I could,” Virim said, “let the Meddler move into this man’s body, and then between us we could try and lure that man back into life. He would need to accept cohabiting with the Meddler, but he would be alive.”

“But his body is broken,” Zebel protested, “beyond our ability to repair it. Are you saying you could fix it?”

“I might be able to help,” Virim said. “The Meddler would actually do more. He could take knowledge he has learned from me about the preservation of life, then employ it to helping this man heal. However, this is not something that can be done from the outside in or I assure you we would have offered before. It is something that only can be done from the inside out.”

Bitter croaked from where he sat beside Lovable on the eaves of Derian’s house.
“When I was near death, the Meddler came and gave me reason to live. His persuasiveness might be up to the task.”

Plik translated, and there was excited if apprehensive stirring among those gathered. Despite having been Once Dead, Arasan had been very popular with the Nexans in his quiet way. His talent had been a gift for song—not beguiling or enticing song. simply songs that gladdened the heart. To win Arasan back from death, even in this odd way, would seem like the best omen for the success of the Nexan enterprise.

Derian said, “I remember his persuasiveness myself, but would Arasan want to live with the Meddler sharing his body? What if after he was healed he regretted the choice?”

Virim shook his head. “Those of you who have been near the edge of death know that there is no room for the personal evasions we the living manage on a daily basis. If Arasan does not wish to accept the Meddler’s offer, then he will not, and he will go into death.”

“And the Meddler?” Harjeedian’s voice sounded very tight, and no wonder, given his mixed feelings about the Meddler.