Wolf Hunting (71 page)

“That is not the cowardice of which I speak,” the fire jaguar replied, “and mine is not the only fire from which you flee. Is that not so, Truth, daughter of a long and prideful line of Truths? Are you not here before me because you have decided to give yourself to the fire rather than face what it brings?”

Truth snarled in faint defiance, but there was no denying that as she had lain there on that rock on the hilltop, basking in the warmth of the sun, she had contemplated the tremendous relief that would be hers if she gave in to querinalo. Death did not seem so terrible a thing in this place, for life with and yet without the talent that had defined her very being was becoming onerous indeed. Indecision haunted her every action. Madness stalked her dreams. Once Truth had thought she could not bear to live without her ability. On that hilltop, she had come to wonder if she could bear to live with it in its current, mutated form.

Now, facing this snarling image so like herself but undamped by doubt and fear, Truth faced something worse than the desire to die. She faced the bitter truth that in some fashion she had been dead from the moment she had fled into the peculiar comfort of insanity. Even when body and spirit had been reunited, still she had continued in that living death.

Truth was the name that had been divined for her, but a better name now would be Lie.

What had Derian Carter said? Something about not being sure whether he would know himself if he were to relinquish his talent? Truth confronted the honesty of those words. She knew that she who had once known so much about everything now knew nothing at all.

The fire jaguar paced toward Truth, and her fangs were white light and her eyes were more brilliant than the sun at noon.

“Then am I to die?” Truth said, bowing her head, for she knew her patron deity when Ahmyn, as the Liglimom called Fire, so manifested before her.

Ahmyn met Truth’s humility with contempt. “You encountered a raging conflagration and fled, you who have been the very ornament of my year. Now you ask if you are to die, as if this is something I am inflicting upon you. Death is here and wears your shape, for you have invited her. Yes, you are to die, unless you choose to fight, but I have not given up
my
ability to read the omens, and thus I see myself dining upon your bitter flesh.”

Truth felt some small flare of her former pride and a strange, weird emotion that after a moment she identified as hope. She knew better than most that no future was absolute. Even in a rainstorm there was the smallest chance that the drops might fall up.

Truth still thought she might like to die, but death this way, with Ahmyn whom she had served with such fierce fidelity glowering at her from those burning eyes …

Shutting her own eyes and bending her head as if in continued humility, Truth reached for the ability she had avoided since the day the Tower of Magic had fallen and in its tumbling rocks she had seen what the future held. In more futures than the sun had light Truth saw herself being rent and torn by the jaguar Ahmyn, but in one slim shadow she saw omens of hope. Into that shadow, Truth leapt.

She landed upon Ahmyn’s back. Instantly, Truth felt her fur ripple and begin to smoke. She would burst into flame if she remained here long, but in all the futures offered to her, this insane course was the only one that led toward the possibility of life. Nor was that life certain. Truth delved again and saw herself consumed in flames, torn into bloody gobbets, asphyxiated as she rolled over and over trying to put out the fire in her fur and flesh. Each of these battles ended in a dark warmth Truth knew was death, but there was one in which the light still shone.

She dove into that light, battling Ahmyn, anticipating each dodge and bite the other jaguar ventured. She was Truth again, riding the strange streams of time and chance, alive in the insanity of knowing each outcome. She fought with claws and fangs, ripped into fur that parted only to spark and flame with greater force as it fed upon her body. Yet, even while Truth screamed in pain until her throat was raw, the moment came when there was not one streamlet that puddled into success in this eldritch battle, but two, then three, then more.

Ahmyn was powerful and her very substance devoured the mortal jaguar who fought against her with increasing skill and ferocity. Ahmyn was the manifestation of a deity, an elemental force only slightly younger than the Earth and Air who had birthed her, yet in this battle she had taken Truth’s shape and form, and so she was limited by them.

For Ahmyn was Fire, but she was not Truth.

Ahmyn might claim to see into the ways the omen waters split, but in this ability Truth knew herself without peer. Sanity or insanity no longer mattered to Truth. She was herself again, one and whole, united as no one but herself could unite herself. Truth gloried as she battled for a life that she realized she did not care to relinquish, even to her own Ahmyn, that deity who she had served with such pride.

So Truth fought and so Truth won, and came to herself upon the damp earth with the sound of ravens shrieking in her ears, and the one called Firekeeper’s hand upon her flank, shaking her gently and saying, “Is this then Truth?”

“TRUTH HAS BEEN FIGHTING something,” Lovable explained, flying alongside Eshinarvash as the Wise Horse carried Firekeeper to where the jaguar had taken refuge when she had felt the first touches of querinalo. “She leapt and twisted so that we hardly dared move lest somehow she register our presence and attack us as well. I do not exaggerate when I say that Truth moved so swiftly I think she could have snagged a raven on the wing.”

“Especially this one,” Bitter added. He was riding behind Firekeeper, claws gripped into the blanket she wore against the cold. “I can fly again, but I am less than dextrous, and Truth—she moved like a whirlwind or a raging flame.”

“Then she fell very, very still,” Lovable said, “and there was something … But you will see yourself. We are here.”

Firekeeper slid from Eshinarvash’s back, knees and ankles protesting bearing her weight. She laid a hand on the stallion’s flank in mute thanks, then moved to where Lovable squawked from the tree limb.

“Here! Here!”

Firekeeper went where she was bid, and for a long moment could not believe that the ravens had taken her to the right place. A cat-like shape lay upon the damp earth, but it was not Truth as the wolf-woman had known her. The glossy golden fur was charcoal black, as if it had been burned. Where spots and rosettes had adorned that glossy pelt were now irregular markings the shape and color of a burning candle flame.

Disregarding her own safety and the complaints of her body, Firekeeper hurried over and knelt beside the figure on the ground.

She sniffed, hoping for some identifying scent, but all she smelled was ash and smoke. She laid her hand on the great cat’s flank. The fur, for all that it looked burned, was soft and dense to the touch. Firekeeper said to the ravens, “Is this then Truth?”

At the sound of her voice, the great cat stirred, opening eyes no longer burnt orange, but the white of the hottest fire. The pupil was pale blue.

“I have been a lie,” the creature said in Truth’s voice, but the words and cadence were strange, “but I am again Truth. I have wrestled with a deity and the deity has won—but then so have I, if living is a victory. And you, bold one who calls herself Fire’s keeper?”

Firekeeper answered levelly, forcing herself to meet those blue-white eyes. “I live, so do all the others, though none has come through without being changed.”

Truth gazed at her unblinking. “All but you, eh, Firekeeper?”

“So they say,” the wolf-woman replied, “but I know better. Can you walk or shall I send for a wagon? I would carry you but I do not think I could bear your weight.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Indeed, I can hardly bear my own.”

“I can walk,” Truth said, “if we go slowly. Eshinarvash should not be asked to carry us both.”

And so they walked slowly, side by side, and as they walked, Firekeeper told Truth what had happened over these past days of illness. Eshinarvash filled in details that Firekeeper, limited by her vigil beside Blind Seer, had not known. Truth, in turn, was more talkative than Firekeeper had ever known her to be, telling of her own long battle with such stark honesty that Firekeeper almost found herself longing for the jaguar’s accustomed arrogance.

It was not that Truth had become humble, not in the least, but she embraced her own failing with such enthusiasm that Firekeeper wondered if such intense humility might be in its own way a new type of arrogance.

They entered the cottage and found the others—including Derian—seated near the hearth. All eyes widened and rounded when they saw what Truth had become. Blind Seer sneezed.

“You smell like a forest fire! No … Worse, for burning wood has one reek, but yours is that of singed fur and scorched flesh.”

“I have been in the fire,”
Truth said,
“but unlike brave Derian, I did not choose my fire until the choice was nearly taken from me.”

To everyone’s astonishment, Truth then crossed to where Derian sat, and gave a low bow.

“What … what is this?” Derian said, clearly flustered.

Plik translated what Truth had said, adding, “I wouldn’t refuse her praise. She’s been through a lot, even to believing she has wrestled with Ahmyn and barely come away with her life.”

“I won’t,” Derian said, his eyes so wide that bits of white showed around them, making him look more than ever like a startled horse. “By my ancestors, I swear it!”

Truth now rose from her bow and padded to where she could sit closest to the hearth.

“We live, we breathe,”
the jaguar said,
“some of us rather differently than before. Now I ask you, what will we do next?
”

“Can you divine the future as once you did, O holy Truth?” asked Harjeedian. Of all the company, the aridisdu had been the most deeply impressed by the jaguar’s tale. “What would the deities have us do?”

“
Divination,
” Truth replied,
“has never been intended to substitute for thought, only to offer guidance. This much I can and will say: There is no one right answer before us. From this moment the future fragments and there are no clear omens as to how the deities wish us to reassemble it.
”

When Plik had translated this, Harjeedian inclined his head in acceptance. Then his face broke into a sheepish smile that astonished Firekeeper with its lack of pretense.

“So much for the easy answer,” the aridisdu said. “Before querinalo struck, we were delving into the matter of what we should do about the Nexus Islands and the facilities they harbor.”

“Can these facilities be destroyed?” Derian asked, his voice filled with loathing. “Can we take sledge and hammer to each of these cursed gates and ruin them beyond use? I, for one, think things of the Old World should remain in the Old World. Look what contact with it has done to us. Look at the twisted people we have found here. I say we break each and every gate to pieces—all but two. One we use to send these ‘prisoners’ of ours back where they came from. Then we break that gate. Then we go home through the gate we know will take us back to the stronghold, and we break that one from the other side.”

No one immediately responded to Derian’s harangue; then Tiniel spoke, and when he did, Firekeeper was reminded that Tiniel had not liked it in the least when his sister had praised Derian’s new appearance.

“I suppose we could go and destroy these artifacts,” Tiniel said. “Such acts would be in keeping with the traditions of our ancestors—and we know how much you northerners revere your ancestors. Tell me though, who will operate the gates? Isende and I cannot. Ynamynet and Lachen are the only Once Dead who survive. Can you trust them to be your agents?”

Firekeeper frowned and spoke quickly to cut off whatever retort Derian might make. It was not spring, but she could scent the rivalry of young males nonetheless.

“Tiniel has a good thought here,” she said. “Who knows if any elsewhere has tried to use the gates?”

Bitter said,
“The yarimaimalom have kept watches on each of the gate buildings, even those that had not yet been brought back into use by those who nest here. So far there has been no indication of the gates coming alive, but will that last?
”

“Is there any way to know if those elsewhere share the secret of the gates?” Harjeedian asked.

Isende said, “If that matter was discussed in my hearing, I no longer remember, but since communication between areas depends on people passing between, my guess is that each active gate may have at least one on the other side who acts as custodian and who could, in an emergency, come across with information.”

“That’s not good,” Derian said. “That means we need to decide quickly.”

Firekeeper shook her head. “If destruction or fighting is what you wish, we cannot act too quickly. All of us who have been ill are weak, and the yarimaimalom cannot use these sledges and hammers of which you speak. These will take hands, and most of our strength lacks hands.”

“And some of us,” Plik added ruefully, “who have hands do not possess, even at our best, the muscle that would be needed to break solid stone. I certainly do not.”

“I might manage some such labor,” Harjeedian said, “but not all that would be needed.”

“I’d be hopeless,” Isende said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Tiniel and I haven’t lifted anything heavier than a dinner tray or log for the fire since we first crossed over.”

Tiniel didn’t look as if he much cared for his sister’s dismissal of his physical prowess, but neither did he deny the accuracy of her assessment.

“That,” Firekeeper said, turning to Derian, “leaves you and me with some help from Harjeedian. Unless you mean to force these humans we have captured to labor for you.”

Derian sank back, the intensity that had fueled his earlier speech draining from him. “Even for that—even if I could—I’m not strong enough now. Maybe when I’ve had more rest, but even at my strongest I was no Ox, awarded for my strength. Very well, if we cannot destroy this place we must either hold it or abandon it. Earlier we discussed how abandoning it invited future problems.”