Wolf Hunting (30 page)

Truth did not wait for the Voice to add whatever clever and cutting statement he undoubtedly had planned.

“And that is your challenge for me, is it not? You have risked insanity and overcome it, so I should prove I can do the same.”

The Voice had the grace to sound a little ashamed.

“Something like that. Yes. That will do.”

Truth huffed her breath out through her nostrils.

“Tell me how you came to escape your prison.”

“It was not,” the Voice said in tones of refreshing honesty, “completely by my own merit. I believe that what you call the Divine Retribution had a great deal to do with it. When people fear for their lives, suddenly, even an old enemy—especially one who is rather well known for taking things in hand …”

“For meddling,” Truth growled.

“As you say,” the Voice agreed cheerfully. “When people fear for their lives, even a Meddler looks good. Some came and made an effort to contact me. They did not free me—that would have come later—but they, let us call it ‘opened a window’ so that we might converse. While we were negotiating, some came who thought that treating with me was worse than the plague. These did their best to close that window, but before they could do so fully, they were interrupted.”

“Interrupted?”

“Attacked, to be frank. Some died. Some fled. Some may have escaped back to the Old World. I don’t know. What I do know is that the window was left open the merest sliver. That pretty much ended any inclination toward suicide on my part. I spent years, decades, sliding that window open enough that I could get a look outside my prison. As you can imagine, I found the world much changed. I also learned that I was still firmly tethered to my prison. As entertainment to fill my lonely hours, I took to looking out that partially open window and …”

“And you started meddling again,” Truth said. She couldn’t manage a growl. Could she blame the Voice for his actions? Could she say that she herself would have acted any differently?

“I did,” the Voice agreed. “My first thought was that sorcery had imprisoned me, so I needed sorcerers to free me. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any in the immediate vicinity.

“Here and there I found those who were attempting to resurrect the art, but they were like children who have found their father’s bow and a quiver of arrows. They have some idea how the device should work, but they lack the strengths to string the dam thing, much less knowledge as to how to fit the arrow and make it fly.”

“And you set out to teach archery,” Truth said, “to Dantarahma, and to this Melina and this Valora of whom the others tell, and to these twins.”

“Well, yes.”

“And me? How do I fit in this?” Truth felt the prickle of her hackles rising, her tail lashing, and wondered if she did this in body as well as spirit. “As we know, two of your students were willing to commit murder. We’ll never know what Valora would have done—and you’ve been very cautious about your intention for the twins.”

“Well, they …”

“No!” Truth roared. “No evasions. What did you intend for me?”

“Why the same as for the others, good Truth. I saw the potential in your situation.”

“For sorcery?”

“Not quite. For untapped potential. I also saw something else.”

“What?”

“Remember that window I mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“When your friends opened the door for you, they finished opening the window for me. My range is still limited. I have a lot of learning to do, but I am managing much better. How do you think I can talk with you so easily now, with your body and soul together and you so dreadfully sane?”

Truth lashed out, why and at what, later she was not sure, but the violence of the motion brought her to full wakefulness. Upon awakening, she noticed immediately that her body no longer lay where she had gone to sleep. She hadn’t moved far, but was outside of the camp, and could hear Eshinarvash stamping his awareness that something was new in his surroundings.

Truth called to the horse, “It’s just me. I had a nightmare, and am going to run it off.”

The Wise Horse settled. “Bad things, nightmares. Good hunting, then.”

Truth’s paws remained sore, so instead of hunting, she found herself a tree and hung over a branch, trying to make sense of what had happened. The Voice had seemed honest, but the more he told her, the more she feared him. The more she feared him, the more she hated him for making her his tool.

So unsettled was Truth that the stars had moved visibly in their nightly dance before she realized that whatever it was the Meddler had intended to tell her regarding their missing companions had been forgotten by them both.

Or had that merely been bait to make her listen to him?

Truth shook her head so hard that her small round ears rattled like leaves on a gale shaken tree.

Bait. That’s what it had been. Bait. Bait to make her go and do what she didn’t wish to do. Bait to make her take up his challenge. She wouldn’t take it.

Truth shook her head again, seeking to dislodge an uncomfortable feeling, as if with mere motion she could assure herself that the secure join of body and spirit would never be threatened again.

THEY HAD RETREATED north and east, Firekeeper cradling Bitter in her arms, Lovable riding on Blind Seer’s back. Beneath the dense forest foliage, color was giving way to shadow with the coming of evening.

“We must warn the others about these creeping briars,” Blind Seer said.

“Yes,” Firekeeper agreed, “but the ravens cannot be moved quickly. Bitter is gravely wounded.”

“My nose tells me you are not merely trying to save yourself what will be a hard run,” Blind Seer said, but the cant of his ears and tail failed to transmit the humor of his words. “Let us find you someplace secure. Then I will run as fast as these four feet can carry me. If the others have kept the trail, with Plik there to translate my message for me (you really should have learned to write, Firekeeper), I should be back to you before the next sunset.”

Firekeeper nodded. She didn’t question why Blind Seer wanted to find her some sort of lair. He would not be the only hunter with a nose sharp enough to scent injury and pain. No predator hunted what would fight when that which would not was easily found.

Lovable might not be able to do more than glide, but her alert memory recalled what she and Bitter had noted during their earlier passage. She directed them toward the ruins of a one-roomed stone structure standing alone in a small clearing that showed ample sign of grazers and browsers both. The stone of the house was thick with honeysuckle vine, but there was no trace of the hook-thorned briar. The few trees were slim saplings that might be eaten by the deer this coming winter.

“The walls are thick and high,” Blind Seer said with satisfaction as he sniffed about the structure for sign that any other laired within it. “You can guard the hole where the door once ways.”

Firekeeper nodded. “And what there is of a roof looks stable enough not to fall—at least not tonight—and nothing larger than a squirrel would trust itself to that shaky bridge. I can block the window holes with dead wood. They were never large to begin with.”

“And don’t forget fire,” Blind Seer said. “Fire will do you more good than all the rest together.”

“I won’t forget,” Firekeeper promised. “I could as soon forget my name.”

Lovable hopped from Blind Seer’s back and walked stiffly to where Firekeeper had set Bitter on the duff-covered floor of the stone house. Blind Seer looked at Firekeeper.

“Would you have me stay until your fire is kindled?”

Frekeeper knelt so she might embrace him around his neck. Holding him tightly, she spoke into the thickness of his fur.

“I kindled fires before you were born, Blue-Eyes. Go. I’ll be fine, but hurry back. Harjeedian may be able to send something to help Bitter—and I will miss you.”

Blind Seer licked the side of her face, then he shook himself free from her hold. He stood for a moment, staring at her. Then he turned away. Swift and silent as the approaching night, he was gone.

FIREKEEPER PREPARED THE FIRE FIRST, building it within the shelter of the stone house. She considered building another outside, but the light would ruin her night vision, so she decided to do without.

As the fire was catching, Firekeeper alternated between feeding the growing flame and dripping water into Bitter’s beak. The raven swallowed, which she took as a good sign. His wounds no longer bled freely, and though she longed to wash them she did not. Doc had taught her a clean wound healed best, but Firekeeper feared that even gentle tending would start fresh bleeding.

Lovable watched these tendings with anxious alertness. In the firelight, Firekeeper could see anew how battered Lovable was. She had thought to ask the raven to sit watch above the lintel, but now she knew the raven needed sleep as desperately as did her mate.

“I’ll make Bitter a sort of nest,” Firekeeper said, “close enough to the fire for the warmth, but not too close. Will you sit with him? I think even in his sleep your scent would be a comfort to him.”

Lovable agreed, hopping to the assigned place and settling in as if she were brooding her eggs. Firekeeper left long enough to fetch fresh water from a spring to the rear of the house. The area surrounding the spring showed some signs of human adaptation. Firekeeper suspected that the spring was why the house was here, and why the forest denizens still frequented the area. Otherwise, the stone house would likely have been covered by vines and growing things, visible only in winter when the leaves died back, and then only as a shapeless mass suggesting something large beneath.

She scrubbed blood and sap from her skin, and set snares in the surrounding tangle. Bitter had swallowed water. He would probably get even more benefit from blood. For that matter, Lovable could probably use a solid meal—and so could Firekeeper herself.

Firekeeper ranged just a little farther in case the scent of fire drove away the small game that certainly lived in this area. She set a few more snares, silently thanking Race Forester for his teaching. Her childhood would have been much easier if she had known more about such things.

Then she hurried back to the stone house. Lovable was alert and watchful. Once again Firekeeper found herself amazed at the tenacious spirit housed within one she had liked, but had always thought rather frivolous. Most who knew the ravens thought that Bitter had been drawn to Lovable as an antidote to his own somber personality. Now Firekeeper was suspecting Bitter had known of his mate’s inner strengths as well.

Never going too far from the stone house, Firekeeper built up a supply of wood for the fire, both green to feed it slowly and dry for light without smoke. She blocked the window apertures. In her wood gathering, she uncovered any manner of bugs and grubs. Some of the fatter ones she ate, for hers would be a long night’s watch. Most she gave to Lovable. They both agreed that Bitter was not ready to eat anything so solid.

Before Firekeeper had completed her self-assigned tasks, evening had given way to night. She checked her snares and found a rabbit in one. Bitter swallowed the still warm blood. Lovable and Firekeeper split the rest, the raven eating the viscera, the wolf-woman the flesh.

Yet although food, fire, and some promise that her patients were not losing ground should have been a comfort, as the night drew on, Firekeeper felt increasingly tense and apprehensive. She sat outside the doorway where her shadowed form would blend into the stone and listened, her bow against her knees, her quiver close to hand.

From time to time she rose and patrolled the vicinity, telling herself that she must not fall asleep, that she must not let her muscles grow stiff from immobility, knowing that she was searching for something, though she knew not what. Blind Seer would not return this night She couldn’t be listening for his return, so for what was she watching?

During one of her turns inside to feed the fire, Firekeeper. arranged the wood so that embers, not flames would result She went to check on the ravens while her eyes adjusted again to darkness. Bitter seemed to be resting easily—or more easily than before. Lovable was awake, alert, and glad for the water Firekeeper poured for her. Bitter accepted more water, but did not appear to fully waken.

“You’re restless,” Lovable said as Firekeeper was making Bitter comfortable in his makeshift nest. “The feeling belongs to this land. Restless. We felt it in the warm air that lifted us over the fields, but we saw nothing. We thought that full night would show something. Humans make lights, you know.”

Firekeeper thought of her redly glowing fire. “I know.”

“We went to rest in a tree. You know what happened.”

“So you saw nothing.”

“Nothing but grass, scattered trees, insects, birds. All the something that is nothing when you are looking for more.”

Firekeeper placed a bent finger against her lips and bit down gently, as if the mild pain would clear her thoughts.

“But there is something,” she said.

“We thought so. You think so.”

Firekeeper reached and gently sleeked down the raven’s feathers. “Thank you. I was wondering if I was overtired, imagining enemies as a puppy stalks his own tail.”

“I don’t think you are,” Lovable said, stroking Firekeeper’s hand with her heavy beak. “I know we weren’t.”

“Good.”

Firekeeper went back to her post alongside the door. She settled in, leaning back against the solid wall, allowing her gaze to unfocus into watchfulness, comparing almost unconsciously features seen before with what she saw now. She stiffened. Something had changed.

The moon was nearly gone, a thin sliver that gave no light. In contrast, the stars were brilliant against the pure blackness of the sky. It was in the patterns of shadow and shape against this star-filled backdrop that Firekeeper detected change.

The stone house stood in a small clearing. Early in her vigil Firekeeper had memorized the shapes that the surrounding trees made against the sky. None of these had changed, yet there was something, something new: new shapes in the foreground, things approaching with such infinite slowness that had she not looked carefully, had she not had eyes trained to see dark against darkness, they would have been invisible to her.