Wolf Hunting (65 page)

That last might have been meant as a gesture of courtesy, but once all of them had crowded into the cottage’s front room, they created heat enough.

“Tea?” Isende said, indicating a kettle on the hob.

Before she could go further with these social gestures, Firekeeper, seated back by a window she had opened so Blind Seer would not be too warm, spoke up: “Can you two open the gate anymore?”

Neither twin pretended they couldn’t understand, and they answered almost as one.

“I don’t think so,” Isende said.

“It’s like querinalo burned away a sense,” Tiniel added.

“Forever?” Firekeeper pressed. “Maybe it will get better again?”

“Forever,” Tiniel said bluntly, but Isende’s reply was different.

“I’m not sure. I feel as if I kept some small … I don’t know what to call it … Gem? Kernel? In any case, some small bit of ability might still be alive, buried deep inside. I remember sending the fires up around it, feeling a hard, glittering core preserved, maybe even refined, in all that heat.”

The twins had been standing side by side in the area closest to the hearth, united against their interrogators, but now Tiniel spun and glowered at his sister.

“What? You never told me any of this!”

Isende stuck out her chin defiantly. “You were so upset. I didn’t think it would make you happy. Has it?”

Firekeeper had the feeling that Tiniel at least had forgotten there was anyone else present. She remembered how the aridisdu in Gak had told them that the twins grew up being able to communicate their feelings without speaking aloud. She wondered if Tiniel had forgotten that the situation had changed.

“How could I be happy?” he said. “I remember what we had. I remember feeling the fires coming. I remember feeling your pain almost as if it was my own, but that didn’t matter because we were united against whatever came. We might die together, but that didn’t matter. Then …”

He stopped speaking, but the expression in his eyes grew wilder and wilder, as if he was remembering something that had been vague until this moment.

Isende prompted him, her tone cool and a touch mocking. “Yes? Yes, Tin. What then?”

“Then I felt a change,” the young man said, the words coming in a rush, becoming staccato. “The heat … It began to … change? No, that isn’t right. It didn’t so much change as … move. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel you. Where you had been was heat. Fever heat. Burning … surging through that intimacy. I felt like my heart was shriveling. I tried to drive it back. I tried to find you again, but there was always the heat where you should be. I tried to drive it back!”

The last phrase was shouted. Isende replied very, very quietly.

“I didn’t. And you know why, Tin. You know why. I fed that fire, and I’m glad.”

Tiniel looked at his sister, his eyes, so like hers, widening in horror and comprehension.

“But,’Sende. I never meant anything wrong. I …”

Isende shook her head, a hard motion, direct as a slap. Tiniel shut his mouth, pressing his lips together so hard that they turned white against the brown of his skin. His agonized gaze remained locked on his sister, but she had turned her attention to the fascinated group who had listened to this interchange without sound or breath.

Isende spoke as if there had been no interruption.

“Despite this ‘gem,’” she said, “I don’t think I can work the gates. Not now, at least. Maybe later. Maybe someday.”

Her tone had become dreamy with contemplation. Now she shook her head.

“But not now. Not soon, even. Tiniel and I wouldn’t have managed what we did without the notes we found.”

Derian was looking at Isende as if seeing her for the first time. “The Once Dead took those?”

“They did,” Isende said with a bitter smile. “Took those and our freedom. Now, I’ve answered one of your questions. Would you answer one of ours?”

Firekeeper gave an answer that wasn’t really an agreement, although she could tell Isende took it for one.

“What is the question?”

“What are you going to do with us?” Isende asked.

Plik replied with a question of his own. “How do you explain your deserting us to rejoin the Once Dead?”

Isende shrugged her round shoulders.

“I can’t. Not really. I can tell you what I think happened, but I don’t know, not for sure.”

“Try,” Plik suggested.

“I think that the Once Dead had put some sort of controlling spell on us. They did a lot of things to us when they first caught us—when we were so stupid as to walk right into their arms. I think they’d set some sort of sign or signal so that if they whistled, we’d come running like bird dogs to their master.”

“And you think that’s what happened,” Plik pressed.

“I do,” Isende said. She looked at her brother for the first time since ending their argument. “What do you think, Tin?”

The young man shook himself, as a dog might when waking from a deep sleep.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said softly, and Firekeeper wasn’t at all certain he meant about the Once Dead. Then his tone became more direct. “All I can add to Isende’s theory is that I have no memory of leaving that place where we were talking to you. I remember the fox. I remember Firekeeper saying something about people coming. I remember more animals than I had realized were near suddenly coming into the light. I remember someone asking if we could help move a few things into the gate building. That’s it. After that, I remember nothing until there was noise and this brilliant violet light, and we were being hustled back to this cottage without a word of explanation.”

Blind Seer gave a low laugh.
“That’s quite a lot of ‘not remembering,’ but I will tell you this. Tiniel smells of many things, including something like rage, but there is none of the fear stink that so often comes when humans lie. If this one lies, he does it without compunction. I could believe that of the Meddler, but not of this one.”

Firekeeper agreed. She switched to Pellish in order to tell Derian and Harjeedian what Blind Seer had said, then returned to Liglimosh to question the twins.

“How long until this querinalo comes?”

“My guess,” Tiniel said with a bitter laugh, “is you’ll be feeling the fever by tomorrow at this time.”

Isende nodded agreement.

Firekeeper turned to her companions. “Then we have much to do before then. Let us set about making all secure.”

“What about us?” Tiniel asked. “You haven’t answered our question. What about us?”

Firekeeper looked at him in cool calculation. “Talk to us after querinalo has run its course. When we know who live or die, then we know what to do with you.”

“Then we stay here?” Tiniel asked. “We stay locked up, just like always?”

“Why not?” Firekeeper said.

Before she could add anything further, Derian surprised Firekeeper by asking Isende, “Would that be all right for you? Would you maybe like to move your things into the other cottage—the one Plik had?”

Isende shook her head, a small, tight smile making her seem suddenly quite old.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, “but I would like to suggest that if you’re going to leave us locked up, you might want to move whoever comes down with querinalo here. Tiniel and I know a little about nursing those with the disease. Right, Plik?”

Plik nodded. “They do. I can testify to that. Really, this would be the best place I can think of.”

Harjeedian interjected, “What about the buildings where the Once Dead lived? We have moved the survivors all into the building they were using as headquarters. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but not many of them were living there, so it was easy to search. Now they’re crowded, but at least we can keep them guarded. The relocation leaves many other empty buildings we could use.”

“We haven’t had a chance to search those other buildings,” Plik said. “I, for one, wouldn’t feel comfortable using one of their residences as a refuge until we could make certain they didn’t have any amulets or some such thing hidden that they could use against us. The few hours we have left aren’t going to be enough.”

Harjeedian nodded. “I have spoken to the doctor here in passing. Let me do so now in more detail.”

“I’ll go and review our prisoners,” Derian said. “Plik, you’d better come with me. Once Firekeeper and I are down, playing jailer is going to be up to you and the yarimaimalom. You may have the advantage on me when it comes to your ability to talk to them, but I don’t see how that’s going to give you extra hands.”

“Right,” Plik said.

One by one, the members of the company moved to various jobs. Firekeeper found herself deputized to bring blankets and bedding that could be used to transform the cottages into a makeshift hospital. There were small donkeys in one of the stables, along with carts and harness. Firekeeper threatened one of the terrified creatures into service so she wouldn’t need to carry load after load.

Blind Seer walked with her, just out of the range of the donkey’s rolling eye, his mere presence coaxing the stubborn beast into unwonted cooperation.

Normally, Firekeeper would have been amused, but thoughts of the ordeal to come haunted her, keeping her from enjoying the present moment. Blind Seer left off his teasing of the donkey.

“Are you frightened, dear heart?” he asked gently.

She didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

“Everyone seems so certain I will be among those to fall,” she said, “but I do not feel magical.”

“You are different from other humans,” the wolf said, his gentleness unfailing.

“But I am a wolf, and my heart is a wolf’s. Nothing that I do would be impossible for a wolf,” Firekeeper protested, then added for fairness’ sake, “at least if the wolf had hands and walked upright.”

“Like the Meddler does in your visions,” Blind Seer said. “I envy him.”

It was the first time he had raised the matter directly. Firekeeper did not evade the scent of rivalry as a human might have done, but she gave the matter a twist no human would have anticipated.

“I envy him as well,” she said. “He has almost everything I want.”

“Almost?” Blind Seer asked.

“Well,” Firekeeper said with a smile, “for one, he doesn’t have you.”

QUERINALO CAME THE NEXT DAY, as Zebel had predicted. First to be touched was the jaguar Truth. Midmorning, Bitter and Lovable brought a report to where Firekeeper and Blind Seer were talking with some of the others near the cottages where their field camp had been moved.

“Truth has found herself an isolated place near where a freshwater spring comes from the rock,” Bitter said. “She says she will bite the first person to move her from it.”

“I don’t think she wants nursing,” Lovable said, hopping and flapping her wings. “Do you think she can survive without it?”

Plik shrugged, “Truth has been mad and sane and near mad again. If anyone can cope with the hallucinations that come with querinalo, then it is she.”

When told of Truth’s decision, Isende admitted rather shamefacedly that she was relieved.

“Even Plik was difficult to handle at times,” she said, “and his claws are not made for rending—not in the same way. Truth may be thinking of us as much as of anyone else.”

Firekeeper nodded. “I think so, too. Truth knows how deadly she is, and how dangerous she can be in madness.”

Derian was the next to fall ill, the symptoms coming on him some hours later. He grew quieter and quieter, but it was not until he began speaking to his younger sister, Damita, telling her how he missed her, that his friends realized he was already engulfed in the early hallucinations.

Firekeeper herded Derian into Plik’s bed, knocking the tall redhead flat with little effort. Then, Blind Seer beside her, she went running for Zebel.

“Why didn’t you smell the fever on Derian?” she asked Blind Seer reproachfully.

The blue-eyed wolf said nothing for several paces; then he looked at her with blank, unseeing eyes.

“I don’t like this place,” he said with flattened ears and drooping tail. Then he collapsed in midstride.

Firekeeper dropped beside him, lifted her head toward the sky, and howled.

Help came in four-legged droves, but none but Firekeeper could lift the enormous wolf. She might have been able to carry Blind Seer, but not without adding injuries to the fever that had brought him low.

Harjeedian came with the donkey cart, and helped Firekeeper lift and slide Blind Seer onto the boards.

“Can you get him to the cottage?” he asked. “I’ll go for the doctor.”

“Not need,” Firekeeper said hoarsely. “There.”

Zebel was coming, herded by a group of yarimaimalom that included a fox, a doe, and a bear. A golden eagle soared overhead, watchful, but the doctor showed no sign of deserting his trust.

“I’m not a veterinarian,” Zebel began, hoisting himself onto the wagon bed and beginning to examine Blind Seer. “I know mostly about treating humans.”

Firekeeper snarled at the donkey, who began trotting at a fair clip despite her burden. Firekeeper paced alongside, near enough to keep the donkey on course, while remaining near to Zebel. Thus far his examination matched those she had seen in the past, and she felt a certain amount of relief.

“But you know how to doctor for wolves?” she asked.

“A little,” Zebel said. “There were a few in our number with better skills than mine in animal medicine. I haven’t seen them since your group’s, uh, assumption of administration, but one of them might be better able to treat your companion than I.”

“Women?” Firekeeper asked. “Three, living in house near where yarimaimalom were kept?”

“That’s right,” Zebel agreed. He’d peeled Blind Seer’s upper lip back and was examining the gum.

“Not here anymore,” Firekeeper said tersely.

Zebel glanced at her as if he was about to ask for clarification, took one look at her face, and hurriedly returned his attention to Blind Seer.

“Well,” he said, “I can do something. The important thing is trying to keep the fever down. Unhappily, when the fever rises, that’s when the hallucinations are worse. Is someone willing to take the risk to sit with the wolf and do what needs to be done to tend the fever?”