Wolf Hunting (6 page)

No,
she thought,
for I was always aware how weak I was in contrast to the wolves. Only among humans did I come to see my strengths.

Even while watching Rascal frolic, Firekeeper had not neglected to keep an eye on Truth. The jaguar had been more vague than usual during that day’s short march, and Firekeeper thought Truth might have gone wherever it was she went when she shed her harness. If so, it was a journey of the mind, not the body. The straps and ties remained snug around the rounded barrel of her body, the collar firmly around her neck.

“So, Truth,” Firekeeper said after she and her allies had investigated the area and found nothing that even vaguely resembled a door. “Where is this door you wish me to open for you? This is the place, is it not?”

Truth did not respond. Only the rise and fall of her breath beneath her ribs gave lie to the impression that they were looking at a figure of a jaguar, stuffed and mounted. Her ears did not twitch, even when Firekeeper snapped her fingers directly outside their rounded cups. Her eyes, normally rich orange with the curious golden sheen that gave back light after dark, seemed almost opaque and dull. The pupils did not change in size when Firekeeper held up her hand to block the brilliance of the sunlight.

“She sees somewhere else,” Powerful Tenderness said. “This is not good.”

“Once before when Truth was like this, I put strong perfume beneath her nose,” Firekeeper said, “and that seemed to awaken her. But there is no scent here stronger-smelling than piss—and we wish to awaken her, not offend.”

“Toss her in the ocean!” Rascal said, bouncing slightly. “Dunking her would wake her up. Go on! There’s water all around us. Truth likes swimming. She won’t mind! She might even think it’s funny.”

Firekeeper had to admit she was tempted to take the younger wolf’s suggestion. To come so far just to have the jaguar stand there ignoring them was annoying—offensive, even. Yet Firekeeper didn’t want to act merely out of temper. As a compromise, Firekeeper ran down to the nearest beach, a narrow strip, almost as much pebble as sand, and filled her cupped palms with seawater. Some, inevitably, dripped away, but on her return enough remained to solidly splash the jaguar’s face.

Droplets beaded on the dense fur, but some rolled into those opaque eyes, into the rounded ears, and down the length of Truth’s nose. Truth blinked, spat, and pawed at her eyes. Salt water stings, and the jaguar’s inner eyelids had not been closed. Then she sneezed, and as if her spirit came back to her with the next intake of breath, Truth shook her head and glowered at Firekeeper.

“So you are back with us,” Firekeeper said. She was already out of reach of those sharp-tipped claws—at least if Truth stayed leashed—but she let her hand drop to her Fang, just in case.

Truth did not vanish, nor did she miraculously shed her harness. Instead she looked side to side, apparently seeing where they were for the first time.

“So we are here,” she muttered.

“So we have been telling you,” Blind Seer growled. “Now, before you forget us once more, tell us, where is this door my Firekeeper is to open for you?”

Truth wrinkled her lip in a feline sneer. “‘Your Firekeeper’—well, we shall see. As for the door, I will show you.”

The jaguar picked her way through the rubble without regard for the pair holding her leash. They scrabbled to follow. Plik, with his round shape and rather short legs, did not have the flexibility to pick his way.

“Here,” he said to Powerful Tenderness, and tossed over his leash so that the massive hand-paws held both lines. Powerful Tenderness acknowledged with a grunt, and pulled back. His strength was such that even the Wise Jaguar must acknowledge it.

“Slow,” Powerful Tenderness said. “This restraint is for your safety, more than for that of anyone else. Should your mind flee your body once more, someone must have hold.”

Truth spat. “Slow is not what I have. This close … I am drawn in too many directions. Here now, here …”

The jaguar sniffed the ground in an area that Firekeeper had noticed was slightly higher than its surroundings. She dug with one paw, then the other, and was apparently satisfied with what she found.

“Hear me well,” Truth said, “for I may not be able to repeat myself. Dig in this place, but carefully … . It is a made hole … .”

The jaguar was already struggling for coherence. Rascal supplied what she did not.

“A cellar, like the one I fell into.”

“Must take out the dirt and stone …” was Truth’s reply. “Northern wall … door … locked, sealed. Must open.”

“I must open,” Firekeeper prompted.

“You will see … . You will … understand …” But the last phrase was little more than a rumble and hiss. When Firekeeper looked more closely, the jaguar’s gaze was again opaque.

“Do we splash her again?” Rascal asked, bouncing again. The young wolf looked willing to carry seawater in his mouth if he’d be permitted to spit it in the jaguar’s face.

Firekeeper shook her head. “No. Let the cat rest. I wish Truth could be more clear, but there is enough here to go on.”

Rascal transformed his bounce into a bound and went to sniff around where Truth had said there was a cellar.

“I don’t see any hole, nor smell one.” He gave a short howl. “There’s no echo either.”

Blind Seer bit him on one ear. “Idiot,” he growled, letting go. “The jaguar said the hole was filled. Remember the proverb: ‘A wise wolf scouts the prey, knows when to hunt, when to stay away.’”

“But we’re not going to run away, are we?” Rascal pleaded.

“No, but this is a hunt like any other,” Blind Seer replied. “As such, it must be planned. Let Firekeeper take a closer look at what we have found. Otherwise we’ll only waste time digging you out again.”

Rascal groveled apology, and Blind Seer relented a little.

“Later, you can put some of your mad energy into digging. Meanwhile, maybe you and I should go secure some dinner, and give proper greetings to our winter friends.”

The blue-eyed wolf glanced over at Firekeeper and she nodded her approval. She would have preferred to go hunting, but Blind Seer was right. She and the maimalodalum had the best chance of finding what must be found. Still, she had to swallow a sigh as Rascal, not she, followed Blind Seer into the green tangle.

Powerful Tenderness bent and picked up the now inert Truth.

“I will take her to the shade and secure her,” he said, “for whatever good that will do. Then I will come and help.”

Plik nodded agreement. “As will I. There is no use guarding Truth when we cannot figure out how she vanishes, and I do not think any predator will come stalking her—not with our mingled scents to give warning that she is not alone. My time would be better spent trying to guess what type of place this was. I have gathered some knowledge of the old builders’ ways in a long lifetime spent among their ruins.”

Firekeeper listened to this with half her attention. She was on her hands and knees, cutting away the tangling vines with her hatchet, then pushing back the accumulated leaf matter and the upper layer of dirt. Here and there she probed with a straight stick until she met resistance. The first few times she dug, all she encountered were stray bits of building stone, but finally her persistence was rewarded.

“I’ve found an edge,” she said. “Building stone, mortared together. It may well be the edge of the cellar.”

Powerful Tenderness had begun systematically stripping away vines and moving stray stones. Now he lumbered over and squatted next to her to inspect her find. Plik picked his way across to join them.

“It looks like the edge of a wall,” Plik agreed, “but which edge? Truth spoke of a northern wall. That implies three others.”

Firekeeper hunkered back, inspecting their surroundings. Unfortunately, the area was flat enough that the mass of the cellar could lie in either direction.

“I think,” she said, “that our best bet would be to trace this wall until it comes to a comer, then see which way the corner turns. If it turns south, then we have found our northern wall. If it turns north, however, we have more searching to do.”

“Can’t we just clear the next wall,” Powerful Tenderness asked, “maybe not fully, but enough to find our way?”

“That’s probably what we must do,” Firekeeper said, “for without any sense of the dimensions of this cellar, we cannot simply pace off a distance and find the next wall. Still, I am hoping that this is the correct wall. Truth led us to this point. I am hoping her sense of direction was precise rather than general.”

“That’s a big hope,” Powerful Tenderness said, glancing over to where the jaguar crouched unseeing and unmoving in the shade of the largest tree he had been able to find.

“It’s all we have,” Firekeeper said, and methodically got to work.

Her persistence over the next several days would have surprised her human friends, all of whom viewed her as impulsive and impatient, but Firekeeper had not survived for the better part of a decade in the northwestern mountains only because of the loving care offered by the wolves.

The wolves could keep her fed and relatively warm, but they could not do for Firekeeper the dozens of mindnumbing tasks that had been part of her daily routine. Just caring for the knife that had been her most important tool had taken discipline lest the blade rust or become dull.

The wolves could tear into their food without regard, but Firekeeper must skin or scale hers. If she wished to save the hides—as she did whenever possible—then she must take care to preserve and treat them. Her knowledge of tanning had been rudimentary, so the hides had stiffened or rotted more quickly than they would have had she had the skills she now possessed. Therefore, she had been forced to make and remake her clothing.

Fishing augmented the meals the wolves brought her, for unlike a wolf, Firekeeper could not eat once every few days and fast the rest. Nor could she thrive on meat close to rotting, as the wolves did. Then, too, she needed vegetable food. In summer this was fairly simple to find. In winter it meant digging through snow and/or breaking ice as did the deer and elk her people hunted.

Yes. Firekeeper possessed ample patience when it suited her—just not for the things humans thought important and she thought rather foolish.

As she methodically cleared accumulated matter from the top of the wall, she thought of these human friends. She had not seen much of them since soon after the falling of the Tower of Magic. Before the winter shut the ports, Derian had gone north again, and there Firekeeper understood he had taken part in the waltzing for precedence that humans called diplomacy.

Derian had returned south to Liglim in the late spring, and Firekeeper had seen him a few times, but the lure of Misheemnekuru and the life she was making there—and the joy that for the first time in over three years apparently no one needed her to do anything except what she wanted to do—had kept her away from the mainland.

Firekeeper felt a little guilty about this, but only a little. There were many humans with whom Derian could occupy himself, and apparently he was becoming quite important among them. He had his pack and she hers. Moreover, she had the promise of several ravens that should Derian come to harm, she would be told.

As she dug, Firekeeper also wondered about this house that was not a house that they were now excavating. Why had someone gone to the trouble of building what Plik assured her must have been a massive and solid structure only to tear it down again and eliminate even the cellars? The longer she and her allies worked, the more it became apparent that the cellar into which Rascal had stumbled had been little more than a root cellar, and had probably been overlooked in the general effort to eliminate all traces of this building.

Plik was not built well for digging. His hands were as clever as those of a human—or a raccoon. With them, he crafted a sort of sledge, and convinced Rascal to haul away the larger pieces of detritus. Then Plik joined Firekeeper and Powerful Tenderness in clearing away vines and probing for wall edges.

When he grew weary, for with his years Plik could not labor as steadily as the younger ones did, he inspected the scattered stonework. On the first night, he told them that some of the stones had fragments of writing on them.

“It’s an old dialect, not one I read easily. I have sent a copy of some of the fragments back to Center Island for translation. If none of the other beast-souled will come, I have asked for a loan of some of the dictionaries. Bitter assures me that between them a couple of the fish eagles can transport even a large book.”

“Can you read any of the writing at all?” Powerful Tenderness asked. “I would like to know what manner of place this was. I do not think it was a mere estate.”

“I can read a little,” Plik said, “and I think you are right about this not being some estate. For one, I do not think that people, even then, so copiously inscribed the stones of their homes. I would guess this was a temple of some sort—but I cannot guess which of the deities were celebrated here.”

Firekeeper did her best to hide a shudder. There was ample evidence that the worship practiced by the forerunners of the modern theocracy of Liglim had involved blood sacrifice—and magic.

THE BOOKS PLIK REQUESTED arrived on the third morning of their digging, but Plik did not have much time to spend piecing together stone fragments and translating their texts, for on that same day Firekeeper found a corner. To her delight, the angle turned south, seeming to confirm that Truth had led them to the northern wall.

“We need to be sure, though,” she said, “so while the rest of you start digging, Plik and I will make certain that we have the outline of this cellar.”

No one protested this division of labor. Blind Seer and Rascal were quite pleased to dig a ditch alongside the inner edge of the wall. Powerful Tenderness, who had brought a shovel blade in his pack and fashioned a handle as soon as digging was clearly in the offing, did deeper clearance. All took turns hauling away the accumulated detritus.

Everyone kept watch over Truth, but it hardly seemed necessary. The Wise Jaguar lay in whatever shade in which she was put, ate when food was put directly under her nose, drank if her muzzle was pressed into fresh water. Otherwise, she did little but dream weird dreams, her paws twitching as she ran who knew where.