Wolf's Blood (68 page)

“Of course we do not hunt for them. I thought you knew something of spellcasters and sorcerers. They have no need for hunting or for keeping animals such as you mention. Whatever they desire comes to them at their least whim. I remember seeing such when I was a pup.”

“Oh?” The cant of Blind Seer’s ears and tail expressed polite interest and mild doubt.

The wolf continued, a growl under-rumbling his account.

“I had been playing with one of my sisters in this very meadow. She stumbled and caught her leg in a twist of vine. Silly thing began whining and whimpering, and before the Ones could come and break her free, a human came forth. He cut the vines, and then to distract my sister while he felt along her leg, he created a little animal—I think it was gopher, some small rodent, in any case—from nothing but a wave of his hand. This startled her so that she forgot to snap when he felt her leg, even though it was badly sprained.”

“Did he heal it?” Firekeeper asked.

“The gopher?” The wolf flattened his ears, clearly doubting her intelligence. “Not after she had eaten it. Greedy creature didn’t even leave me a bit of fur.”

“I meant your sister’s sprain.”

“I don’t remember. Probably. She lived to grow strong, and possesses a very firm bite.”

“A good ending to any tale,” Blind Seer said politely.

Firekeeper appreciated his manners. The other wolf was beginning to bristle and raise his hackles, and this was not the time for a fight.

The bear’s increased pace had brought him to the shadow of the enormous doors. Here he paused.

“We have escorted you to Virim’s stronghold as you requested. This is as far as our trail takes us.”

Firekeeper held up her arm in signal, and Elation dropped to take her place. Then Firekeeper addressed the gathered Bound.

“You are not coming in? Don’t you wish to explain to Virim why you have let us through to his doorstep?”

The bear snorted. “As if you cannot talk for yourself! You and your pack mates are very good at talking. I wish you well with it. Certainly, your bow and knife will mean little to Virim.”

Firekeeper, remembering her iron arrowheads and steel blade, wondered otherwise, but thought nothing was to be gained by the mention.

Blind Seer glanced at her. “Shall we go?”

Firekeeper nodded. Elation made a derisive sound.

“Why else did we come this far?” the peregrine said.

The three went forward without a look back or a parting word for the gathered Bound.

For their part, the Bound watched in silence, waiting to see if the stronghold’s doors would open to admit the strangers or if the portals would remain closed, thus signaling Virim’s desire that the Bound carry out their sworn duty.

But even before the three had mounted the final step, the doors were swinging wide to admit them. Wolf and woman walked forward, pace matched by pace, the falcon watchful on the woman’s shoulder.

“There is no scent of fear about them,” the stag marveled.

“Are they then so brave?” asked the boar.

“No,” grunted the bear, turning away. “It is because they are fools.”

XXXIII

  “I CANNOT CATCH the scent of whoever opened those doors.” Blind Seer said as they paced forward.

The cant of his ears and tail showed alert interest, but Firekeeper, who knew him well, was aware of the tension that lay beneath the apparently confident attitude. “I doubt your nose is at fault,” Firekeeper replied. “I am certain that people who could curse an entire world have ways of opening a door from a distance.”

Without hesitation, they crossed the threshold that opened into an elongated ovoid chamber, whose shape recalled that of a human eye. A light, clear and brilliant, yet soft as the edge of a single candle flame, illuminated the vast space, showing floor and walls carved from stone the pale yellow-white of ivory.

Firekeeper did not need to look to know the illumination came from light blocks such as she had seen built into many structures constructed by the Old Country rulers. Most of these light blocks had been dead, but on Misheemnekuru she had seen a few of those blocks functioning. She had admired their effectiveness then, but now she realized that what she had seen there had been as a cloud-covered sky in contrast to the pure light of sunrise. Yet the pale stone of the walls glowed with none of the scorching brilliance of sunlight. The light remained soft and pleasant.

By this light, Firekeeper and her companions saw that the back edge of the ovoid entrance hall was lined with evenly spaced doors, each picked out in the palest of gold but otherwise undifferentiated from the walls around them. Even as Firekeeper studied those doors, wondering where they led, she contrasted this light-clad chamber to the grey-walled fortress they had entered.

“Perhaps Virim did wish to conceal his den,” she said to Blind Seer and Elation. “Surely this place shows none of that humility and desire to be one with the natural world of which the bear spoke with such confidence.”

Elation, who had been soaring about the upper reaches of the ovoid chamber, swept down and perched on Firekeeper’s extended arm.

“The sky is as natural as any dark and messy forest tangle,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “That is what this room reminds me of—the sky when you are flying, when nested in light and wind, with only the barest hints of color around you.”

“Perhaps,” Firekeeper said. “I know very little of the sky.”

She turned to Blind Seer who had walked a few paces into the chamber and was inspecting it, nose to the polished stone of the floor.

“Can you catch any trails that might guide us to choose one door over the others? I have no great desire to chase a rabbit in and out of its warren. In those games, the rabbit ends up sleeping soundly somewhere and the wolf goes hungry.”

“Think badger or weasel,” Blind Seer cautioned, “or even fox. This is no rabbit we hunt. The rabbit relies on speed and caution alone. This Virim has teeth.”

“I am warned,” Firekeeper said, following the blue-eyed wolf deeper into the chamber.

She had kept some of her attention for the great doors through which they had entered. and now saw them begin to slide slowly shut. She made no move to stop them, but watched with equanimity.

“That,” she commented, “I expected. Fox or badger this Virim, perhaps, but most certainly human.”

Blind Seer and Elation, both all too aware that many humans equated caging with controlling, indicated their agreement.

“So,” Firekeeper said, “no trail to any of these doors?”

“Not by scent.” the blue-eyed wolf replied.

“Nor by sight,” the peregrine added. “I scanned from above and these stones are pristine, without the least fleck of dirt or leaf mold much less any pattern of wear that would show one door has been more frequently used than another.”

“All in keeping with our ‘bad smell.’” Firekeeper said then.

She and Blind Seer had shared their suspicions with Elation during the return journey, and the falcon had admitted such made sense, although she herself had detected nothing more odd than was usual with humans.

“But then the days when I knew more about humans than did the two of you are long past.” Elation had admitted, and Firekeeper had found herself both discomfited and pleased by this casual promotion.

So now Elation waited for direction, her gold-rimmed eyes nonetheless watchful and alert. Firekeeper addressed both her companions.

“Humans are very strange creatures.” Firekeeper said. “At first I thought them very like wolves in things that were important. Remember, Earl Kestrel went west of the Iron Mountains because the humans of Hawk Haven were circling and snarling over who would be their One. Lacking the fangs that would give him a solid bite in that battle, Earl Kestrel sought someone who could be those fangs for him. He hoped to find Prince Barden, but failing in that, he found me. I think he saw me as a tool, something he could hone and sharpen as humans do their swords and knives, then turn to his need.”

Neither wolf nor falcon interrupted the wolf-woman’s telling, although they knew this tale as well as did the teller. Perhaps they sensed she spoke to another audience.

“But I did not become some easily used edged blade, and Norvin Norwood did not find himself father to a princess waiting to be a queen. He accepted this with becoming grace. gave me home and name, even when I insisted I needed neither. Others who fought in that battle did not take their defeat so well. From the actions of two of these. brother and sister, I learned something very valuable, something that separates human from beasts more essentially than any matter of fang or claw or furred coat.”

Blind Seer was studying her intently, more intently, Firekeeper thought, than her words merited, but she put that from her. One battle at once. This one, although joined so very quietly, must have her full attention.

“What did you learn, dear heart?” Blind Seer asked.

“I learned that while Beasts live in the world, humans live in two places simultaneously: that of the world and that which exists within their own minds. Sometimes these are close together. Sometimes they are not. Think on it, and you will catch the true scent of this trail.”

Blind Seer did not disagree. Indeed, if anything the thoughtful expression on his features became more pronounced. Firekeeper looked at that expression of worry— lines deepened between his eyes and head tilted slightly to one side—and thought how odd it was that a human head and a wolf’s could show the same expression.

But perhaps it was not so odd, given how alike wolves and humans could be—and how very different.

She went on, speaking of that difference.

“Think of Melina,” she said, “and all that she did because she came to believe that what she had imagined within her mind was as real—more real—than the events happening around her. Some might say she won that battle for who would rule after King Tedric in Hawk Haven, but because Princess Sapphire did not win in the fashion Melina had imagined, Melina could not accept this transformed world. She left it, burrowing deeper within herself, and what she did then, well … It is too much to tell, but Melina’s end shows the danger of living too much inside the mind without adapting to the world without.

“But humans do this all the time. Beasts do not. Even Beasts like Truth who have the gift for seeing the future cannot be said to live within their minds as humans do. The many futures the diviners see are still rooted in reality. The diviners are seeing them, but not imagining them. In contrast, humans can live completely separated from the world around them, and yet believe themselves not only sane but even wise.”

“This is true?” Elation said.

“This is true,” Firekeeper replied. “And I think within this lies the answer to the riddle of these many doors—so alike, different only in their placing. In this, too, lies the answer to this strange stronghold, like but unlike any such place I have ever seen before.”

“So which door?” Elation asked.

“You ask that as a Beast would,” Firekeeper said with a laugh. “I will answer as a human. Any door will do, any and all. We are not within a place, rather we are within Virim’s mind, within the palace built by his dreams, within the fortress built to protect those dreams, within the prison that has distorted those dreams into nightmares so twisted that even their creator does not recognize them, any more than he knows himself.”

“Are we trapped then?” Elation asked, flapping her wings and taking ungainly flight.

“Virim is,” Firekeeper said, “and our task is to find him and bring him to where he can see reality once more, and in that reality give us the answer we seek.”

“Answer?” Blind Seer said, shaking as if he had run through a nest of dewdrop-soaked cobwebs and sought to clear them from his coat.

“Answer,” Firekeeper said simply. “The one we have come here seeking, the answer to how the curse Virim laid upon the world may be lifted so that reality—good and bad, complex and simple—may move along its course once more.”

“All well and good,” Elation said, soaring higher, circling to inspect the doors, “but where do we begin our search?”

“We begin it with the Virim we have already met,” Firekeeper said simply. “Bruck.”

“Bruck? But we left him behind in the cave.”

“Bruck,” Firekeeper repeated. “He is Virim, and so no matter where we imprisoned him, he is here.”

“Virim? I don’t understand,” Elation said.

“That is because you are a Beast and sane,” Firekeeper replied. “Bruck is Virim, Virim seeking to know us and to escape himself. I know this because it is the only thing that makes sense—far more sense than to believe that a pack of humans would live in isolated harmony for over a hundred years. Bruck is Virim, the Virim who desperately wants to know us, and when he hears our call, he will not be able to resist coming forth.”

Elation’s shriek of disbelief was broken off in mid-cry.

Bruck had appeared, now standing a few feet away from Firekeeper and Blind Seer. He looked much as he had when they had first met him. The ravages of their journey did not mark him, nor did the burns left by the iron wire show on his wrists and ankles. His robes were clean and his feet shod in unworn slippers.