Wolf's Blood (62 page)

Only if I win this war,
Bryessidan thought,
for if I fail to do so, your wars will be lost before they begin.

He straightened then, and placed the armor like a crown upon the stand.

But I will win, and you will wear that armor, as queen of the Mires, and perhaps of all Pelland as well, perhaps as empress of all the world, with your sister and brothers marching proudly as kings and queens in your train.

XXX

  “SOMETHING DOESN’T SMELL right,” Blind Seer said to Firekeeper.

Two days had passed since their retreat from the area held and guarded by the Bound, but those two days had not been wasted. For one, they had solidified their alliance with the local Royal Beasts, even managing to send word to their own pack where they were and what they were about. In this way, if they failed in their task, they would not simply vanish. Someone would know to look for them, and, if necessary, avenge them.

Another thing they had done was talk a great deal with Bruck—or rather they had listened while Bruck talked.

The spellcaster seemed almost pathetically eager to share what he knew about those who still held Virim’s stronghold, going on at great length—even for a human—about those who remained within, about their factions, about their battles. Bruck had even sketched a diagram of the stronghold, apologizing for his lack of precision even as he drew the locations of doors and windows, and the likely placement of traps.

At first, Firekeeper had thought Bruck was talking so freely in an attempt to preserve his life—to show them how valuable he could be to them. As he talked more, she began to wonder if perhaps he—like the Meddler—intended to make them his tools. After all, the other spellcasters had forsaken him, even tried to kill him. Alone he could not win back his place, but perhaps with the help of Firekeeper and Blind Seer he hoped to win not only that place, but to make himself One now that Virim was gone.

Now, however, she shared Blind Seer’s uneasy feeling that there was something off in Bruck’s volubility, in the version of events he was giving them. Wolves trust those of their pack, but for all his groveling, Firekeeper did not think Bruck had truly subordinated himself to her and Blind Seer. Years ago, she had learned the painful lesson that humans can lie, and that they might see a wolf’s honor as a wolf’s weakness.

“I agree,” Firekeeper said. “The trail has been muddled with too many tracks, but I cannot pick out the true course.”

“Nor I,” Blind Seer said, “but I do know where I began to lose my way. It was soon after we came to this place. I think soon after we first captured Bruck.”

Firekeeper nodded. “He lies. I can smell that, but I don’t know how we can sort the lies from the truth without going forward and learning for ourselves where the reality differs from his report.”

Blind Seer huffed wolfish laughter.

“Impulsive, and likely to get us killed. Remember: ‘Circling is not merely going in circles. The truth of the trail can be seen from either end.’”

Firekeeper rolled her eyes. Blind Seer was fond of quoting proverbs, and she no longer believed they all reflected the received wisdom of wolf-kind. Rather, she suspected he created them himself to serve his immediate purpose. Even so, there was sense to this one.

“So we circle,” she said, “examining the trail to read its message before it becomes a hopeless mess. I will begin.”

“Good.”

“I have been thinking over all these tales Bruck has told us of Virim and his pack. At first I believed them, even to the smallest detail. Now I think they ring like the howls of a young wolf who wishes the pack to believe he has taken an elk when his prey is merely a rabbit. Big howl, little reason.”

Blind Seer wriggled a little, as if he would pounce on her words, but he did not interrupt.

“Humans are like wolves,” Firekeeper said, “in that the strong rule the rest. Just as the Ones are tested by the pack, so humans push at each other, vying for position over the most minor matters. I cannot believe that Virim’s followers remained contentedly out in these isolated woodlands for over a hundred years when there were lands in the Old and New Worlds alike where they could make themselves One. Surely, someone would have become overwhelmed with frustration and sought to disperse. Bruck’s tales tell nothing of this. All his tales are of rivalries within the group, rivalries to change the group’s policy regarding the maintenance of querinalo. There is not a single tale of those who sought to disperse.”

“Perhaps those who attempted to disperse were slain,” Blind Seer suggested. “Remember what happened to Bruck when we captured him? Only a short time later, he was nearly killed by what he said was a warning from those pack mates who felt he had betrayed them.”

“I have been remembering,” Firekeeper said, “and that is why Bruck’s tales stink! He has told us so much about his pack mates, even to their names and loves and rivalries. Why does he not mention those who sought to leave and failed? I think he tells us the tales that will draw us back there. The tales that will make us feel that we two—three with Elation—are enough to invade and take what we desire.”

“I can think of many reasons why Bruck would want this,” Blind Seer said, “from revenge to a desire to see those who attacked him attacked in turn to perhaps hoping that we would distract or weaken his opponents so that he could win back his position—or even take one that is higher. So shall we agree not to believe anything he has told us of that place and those people?”

“Except that the fortress has walls,” Firekeeper agreed, “and only then because we have seen them ourselves, and possibly only after we have touched them.”

“I can run with you on that trail,” Blind Seer said. “Shall I tell you what has troubled me?”

“Tell.”

“It is this matter of Virim’s death. I know it matches neatly with my own visions when I ran after the fever, but could I really have slain one of Virim’s power?”

Had Firekeeper possessed fur, she would have bristled at the suggestion that any battle held one on one could be beyond a wolf like Blind Seer. Instead, she had to settle for embracing him.

“I believed you when you told the tale, even though by then the Meddler had identified your mountain sheep as Virim.”

“So did I,” Blind Seer said, “because it mated tightly with my own desire to believe that although I had accepted this unforeseen ability, that I had taken it, hunted it, made it my own, rather than letting it make me its own.”

“But you are less certain now?” Firekeeper said. “Why?”

“Bruck’s tales again,” the blue-eyed wolf admitted. “He has told us how a vision of Virim as the golden-hoofed mountain sheep went forth to each and every sorcerer who fell ill to querinalo. This was how Virim boasted of his achievement, making certain that each of his victims knew who was tearing out their lives.”

Firekeeper was quick to sniff back along Blind Seer’s reasoning. She thumped her hand on his shoulder and fought back an urge to howl in giddy triumph.

“And this is one tale we can believe,” she said, “for we have it not only from Bruck, nor even from the Meddler, but from the records the maimalodalum discovered on Misheemnekuru. We know that Virim made his boast and how he made it.”

“It is possible that somehow Bruck knew of my vision,” Blind Seer said. “I suspect that anything that has happened in the fever dreams of querinalo are open to them. If I am right, then they know how the mountain sheep taunted me, and the penalty I exacted for his mockery.”

“And used that vision to make us believe that Virim was dead—and not by the hand of any of his pack mates, but by your fangs. Why would Bruck do this?”

“To make us believe that we are stronger than those who hold what we desire?” Blind Seer suggested. “Perhaps to make us believe that Virim is dead? Remember, Virim is their One. If he has held them under his rule for more than a hundred years—without a single sorcerer succeeding in striking out on his or her own—then truly he is the greatest of them all. Would we dare challenge him if we believe him alive?”

“But if we believed him dead, and his pack reduced to snarling fragments,” Firekeeper said, “then we might well go forward. Why not just come after us? Why have the Bound merely warned us when they could have slain us?”

“I don’t know,” Blind Seer said. “As I said, this entire situation doesn’t smell right. Even now I think we only circle about the edges and so sniff out the outlines of the wrongness. I do not think we have picked up the straight trail that runs on the other side.”

Firekeeper nodded, but another, deeply disturbing thought had come to her.

“I think you may be right when you say that Virim and his pack can run free in querinalo’s mad dreams. Didn’t you and Derian and Truth all speak within one of those visions? Didn’t the Meddler join you there, and speak to you?”

“This is so,” Blind Seer said. “I did not stay long, but strangely enough, it was the Meddler’s urging that I do my best to survive that made me determined to do so only if I could do so as a wolf would. Strange, now that I think of it, but all three of us who met the Meddler in that glade not only survived, but survived with some vestige of our abilities. Was he meddling even then?”

“Probably,” Firekeeper said, thinking of the Meddler’s declaration of love and tightening her grip on Blind Seer as a barrier against the fascination she felt for the strange not-quite-man.

“I will need to consider,” Blind Seer said, “whether I am grateful or not. I think I would have made my own choice nonetheless, but both Truth and Derian might have given way, and Derian, for all he denies it, is improved by the experience.”

Firekeeper grinned, but a sudden thought wiped away thoughts of her friend.

“The Meddler has almost always spoken to me in dreams,” she said. “What if Virim and his pack have had access to these?”

Blind Seer considered for a moment. “I don’t think they could manage that. The Meddler is a canny fox not likely to forget to dig a channel to guide the rainwater from his den. I do not think he would speak freely to you if he did not believe his words reached you alone.”

Firekeeper wasn’t certain.

“What if he is allied with them? He is the one who set us to go after querinalo. He is the one who first warned us that the Nexus Islands were in danger.”

“Neither of these,” Blind Seer said, “seem to be to Virim’s advantage. Besides, the Meddler was slain and his spirit locked away long before the coming of querinalo. He knew of Virim, true, but that hardly makes them allies. Surely if they were allied, Virim would have set the Meddler free.”

“And we have seen evidence of the Meddler’s long imprisonment ourselves,” Firekeeper said, “and again the maimalodalum confirm his tales of the length of his confinement. Very well. I will hold my suspicions of the Meddler.”

“As to being Virim’s ally only,” Blind Seer said, “we must not forget that he plays his own game and has a disturbing tendency to see living beings as toys he can tug at and gnaw for his own pleasure.”

“I will not forget,” Firekeeper said. “I won’t even forget that I seem to be one of his favorite toys.”

Blind Seer gave her a sloppy lick across one side of her face.

“Wise, Little Two-legs. Very wise. Now, tell me. We have decided that not one track or scent of the trail that has brought us to this point can be relied upon to lead us to our prey. Do we surrender? If we run hard, we might reach the gate in New Kelvin and be back to the Nexus Islands in time to fight at Derian’s side.”

“Only if we turned Bruck loose,” Firekeeper said, “or killed him, and I am reluctant to do either. In any case, we two—three with Elation—may be great fighters, but I am not confident whether we would be enough to turn the balance of the battle. It seems too likely that we would be among the corpses on the battlefield, and that Lovable and Bitter would recite our praises as they ate our eyes. No, for Derian and for the Nexans and so the gates do not fall into the hands of those who would use them to justify invading the New World as they clearly have justified invading the Nexus Islands, we need to deal with Virim and find a cure for querinalo.”

Blind Seer shifted from beneath her hold, and began pacing restlessly.

“Following the Meddler’s lead,” he said, “we have always spoken of finding a cure to querinalo. There is another course we could take, one that might be easier, especially since Bruck says Virim himself is uncertain about the newly weakened form of querinalo.”

Firekeeper thought she knew where the blue-eyed wolf was leading, but she forced herself to state it aloud.

“We could go to the Bound and explain that we share their thinking and that of those first Bound. We could say that the reentry of magic to the world—even in the diminished form it now holds—is too much. We could then beseech Virim and his allies to hear our cries for rescue. We could ask him to bring back querinalo again, querinalo as it first was—terrible and deadly.”

“That would certainly end the problem of the gates,” Blind Seer said, “for none would be left with the ability to work them. We could beg for time to get the Nexans off the island so they would not be stranded.”