Shadowlands (20 page)

“Metal mined in the
Glaso’ok
Mountains of the North, by Trolls and Goblins. Forged using the bearer’s own blood by Solitary smiths.” Alejandro picked up the blade and set it leaning against the arm of his chair. “No one else knows how it is done.”

“Okay. So that’s a dead end.” Nik drummed on the table with his fingers. “Look, we’ll take any help you can give us, any at all, but—and no offense meant—how much can
you
do? Is there any other way you could get reinforcements?”

“Nik, what is it you’re not telling us?”

He took in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. “Can I use your Internet?”

Something told me Nik wanted more than a smartphone, so we took him upstairs to the spare room we’d set up as my office. Alejandro had all the latest stuff up there, and it only took Nik a minute to access the CBC News site.

I frowned as the headlines popped up. Seven students from a private school had been found dead, an apparent suicide pact. I looked up at Nik, but he pointed back at the screen. Names were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

“The poor children,” Alejandro said, reading over my shoulder. “Their poor parents.”

“The parents are going to say the kids didn’t have any reason to do this, and no one’s going to believe them.”

Apparently, there had been a rise in suicides over the last six months, and not merely among the young.

“They don’t mention High Park flu,” I said.

“The CBC won’t,” Nik said. “But wait, look at this.” He went to another site and scrolled slowly though a number of pages, clicking on links for related items. Some were news articles like the one we’d already seen, from the CBC, City, and CTV, others had the look of privately exchanged links, articles, blogs, and live journals. They all recounted the same kinds of events. An increase in the number of homeless found dead—unusual in the warmer weather. A husband bringing his catatonic wife into the emergency room. High Park flu—those words came up over and over. Three children drowned swimming off Centre Island while their parents drifted away in their canoe.

“These are all items collected by Outsiders,” Nik said. “We’ve seen this kind of thing before—most recently in 1918, the so-called Spanish flu. So far, no one else has put together what we’ve seen.”

“They don’t know what they’re looking at,” I said. “They don’t see the connections.”

“Rise in depression, in suicide rates, hell, in PTSDs. And you can see there’ve been incidents in other places as well, in Rome, in Beijing, in New Delhi, Cairo, New Orleans.”

“Where there are crossroads, or a Portal to the Lands,” Alejandro said.

“Anywhere the Hunt might have come through,” I said.

“Exactly.” Nik nodded. “It seems to start here, in Australia.” He clicked on a series of articles which were now several months old. “It spread out, though now the incidents seem to be dropping in other places, and rising here.” He turned to face us again. “You know the
dra’aj
I have isn’t my own.”

I nodded. “Not what you were born with, anyway,” I said. “But it was freely given to you. Like that old man with Elaine.”

“Right, exactly. But it’s like I said then, there’s only so much available, and there’s too many…”

He looked at his empty coffee cup as if seeing it for the first time. He gestured at the computer. “We can’t help everyone, and there are more every day. How many can we save? Can you see what this might lead to? There’s only so many people dying of natural causes at any given time, only so much
dra’aj
available, even in cities larger than Toronto. Even if we could move all the stricken ones to say, Beijing, our organization couldn’t handle the influx. Our whole system would collapse. Maybe, if there were no new ones…”

He turned to Alejandro. “Do you see, we appreciate your help—hell, we
need
your help, but we’re afraid it won’t be enough.”

It seemed like it was someone else nodding, not me. I rubbed at my mouth, but the numbness I felt was everywhere.

I knew what he wasn’t saying. An input of
dra’aj
wasn’t a permanent cure. Outsiders were like cups with tiny cracks, tires with slow leaks. They needed a regular supply of
dra’aj
to keep themselves sane and whole. There was a limit to how much they could be expected to do for newbies.

And what was more, Nik had given Elaine the
dra’aj
he’d been expecting to use himself. That’s what old Harry in the palliative care ward had meant when he’d said “Not you?”

“You can’t kill them all by yourself, can you? Soon enough? You talked about others, but if what you say about
gra’if
is true…Can you get anyone else?”

I looked at Alejandro. He was rubbing the back of his calf with his hand. He caught me watching him and looked grim. Then he sighed like a parent who was about to give in, and shrugged.

“Perhaps I can.”

We can trust him.
Stormwolf blinked unseeing at the ceiling that was lost in the darkness of his bedroom. Valory Martin’s words pricked at him like needles, sliding cold through his skin and touching with points of pain at unexpected softness. How could she be so certain? Remembering her eyes on him, he shivered, though the room was
warm. The High Prince looked at him with the same eyes, though hers were gray and not the human’s warm caramel. Both women had dragon fire in their gazes. Wolf felt he understood the High Prince, even if not completely, but this Valory, what was she?

A psychic, she had said. A kind of Truthreader, he had guessed. Get of a Rider, she had said, and that made more sense. That explained, if nothing else, the so faint smell of the Lands that had first set him, though in error, on her trail.

It now seemed that several times, and in several places, he had made similar errors. There had been the scent/not scent of the man in the open square in Granada, and here, in and around the train station. These were accompanied by other smells, familiar smells, but off somehow, changed. Familiar, but not familiar enough.

Did this mean he had been smelling the Hunt all along? Changed somehow, as the Sunward Rider and Valory had suggested?

He threw off the covers, sat up, swung his feet to the floor, ran his hands through his hair. Had he been so close to his goal all along, and not known it? He drew in a great lungful of air and tried to order his thoughts. Concentrated on recalling the precise nature of these unidentified smells.

The encounter with Stump in Granada. He’d noticed the scent crossing that of Nighthawk, and just before his old Pack mate had appeared.

Twice now in Toronto. Once around the area where Valory’s trail had been crossed by running water. And the other…where had the other been?

Stump. Stump was one of Badger’s Five. So they, for certain, had been left here in the Shadowlands. Who else? Why could he not remember clearly? Wolf gripped the edge of the mattress, letting go as he felt the heavy cloth start to tear in his hands. Badger’s was not the only Five that had taken part in the Hunt for the Exile. Some had returned to the Lands with him, at the Basilisk’s command. Some had remained. If only he had been able to question Stump before killing him.

Wolf rubbed his face. He was afraid to think.
We can trust him.
How could she know?

He had tried to set aside all thoughts of his life as a Hound ever since the High Prince cured him of being one. But when she decided
to send him back to the Shadowlands, one thought had resurfaced, unbidden and unwanted. Was his brother here? Could he and the others be saved, as Wolf had been saved? Now, he needed to remember everything.

The hunger. The need. Wolf squeezed his eyes shut. If he was going to remember, he would have to face even that. How everything smelled, how easily it could be tracked, especially the
dra’aj
, like a heavy perfume that lingered in the air. The tracking he could still do. It was the hunger that made the
dra’aj
smell so sweet. The pain of being without it, the itch that could be scratched only by the shifting, the changes. The consequent inability to be still, as the need for the
dra’aj
, its taste, its scent, its force overwhelming and powerful, swept into you, blotting out the world as it came—

Wolf opened his eyes, tried to slow his breathing.

He had wanted to forget this. Had he succeeded well enough to mistake the scent of his old Pack? Did they smell differently because of his cure? Was the change in him? Or in them? Beyond doubt they were here. What did that mean for him? He pulled his lips back from his teeth.

“He is telling the truth. We can trust him.” The irony was so heavy he could taste it. What he had told them was indeed the truth, but certainly not all of it. Valory had spoken with the certainty of the Truthreader, of the Dragonborn. Was Valory Martin right? Could he be trusted? Could she know?

Could
he
know?

This was no part of his work, Wolf thought. The High Prince had given him a task and he should even now be about it, instead of lying here pretending to rest. But those he was to find, those who had chosen to hide themselves, they had been waiting long already; surely a short time more would not displease anyone?

While that same short time could be all he required to learn what he needed to know. The truth of the strange scents, the truth of the Pack, the truth of himself, if it came to that.

Surely the Dragonborn Prince, full of the fires of knowledge, would understand his need?

Wolf got to his feet. In his mind he pictured the room where they had sat drinking beer. He subtracted the bed behind him, the heavy curtains to his right and the window behind them. The thick wool
of the carpet beneath his feet, and the hard oak floor under it. He added a wide uncurtained window with cranking mechanisms to open the glass. A cushioned bench, a basket chair with matching cushions. Added a rectangular table made up of a streaked marble top resting on curving metal legs. Stiff woven matting on the floor, with panels of some strange wood composite beneath.

CRACK! And he was standing in the small room at the back of Valory’s house. Enough light bled in from the streetlamps outside that, even without Rider’s eyes, he would have been able to recognize the room and navigate within it. He held still, waiting to see if the noise of the displaced air brought any response from the Rider Graycloud, but there was no sound from anywhere else in the house.

And
there
was
her
scent. Now that he had a person to connect it to, he no longer smelled only the faint essence of Rider that had first drawn him to her. Now he knew the scent of warm vanilla that was Valory Martin, and no one else. A perfume in his nostrils. He followed it through the kitchen area with its cooking smells, so common here in the Shadowlands, the next room, narrow, with its long wooden table, glass-fronted cabinet full of patterned plates and drinking glasses. He could smell the traces of bone in one, and silver in the other. To his left was the staircase.

I knew that Wolf was in the house before the movement of air told me the door to my bedroom had been opened. He hadn’t made any noise that I could hear, but I’d known he was there just the same. I let him get all the way into the room, and close the door behind him before I turned on the reading lamp next to my bed.

I blinked, and not just at the light. For a second I actually couldn’t remember whether I’d ever seen a man naked before—and then I realized that of
course
I would have remembered. This wasn’t something I could ever forget. I decided not to say anything.
Think about how pale his eyes are,
I told myself. Not dark like Nik’s.
Okay, don’t think about Nik either
.

He saw that I was awake, but he didn’t say anything, just stood there with his brow furrowed, and his lips in a thin line, as if wondering why he was there. I put my finger to my lips, but his eyes only narrowed, and I realized that he didn’t understand me. I made a mental note that the meaning of that particular gesture didn’t carry
over to the People. I signaled him to come closer—that gesture was apparently the same—and tried to keep my eyes above his waist. A girl can be curious, but there’s a time and place for everything.

“Can you be very quiet?” I said, placing my finger on my lips again so he’d get the connection, and then patting the air in a downward motion.

He nodded, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to my bed. Fortunately, that meant his lower half was now out of my line of sight. As long as I didn’t move.

“What is it you need to ask me?” I figured I knew, but I found I wanted to hear his voice.

“How do you know
what
you know?” he asked me. [The gray-eyed woman with her masklike face; fear and longing.]

“I told you, I’m psychic.” He waited, so evidently more was needed. “Alejandro says the Rider that was my ancestor was guided by a Dragon, and that everyone who is can see the truth. Wouldn’t that be it?”

Wolf sat quietly for a moment, his gaze turned inward. “The High Prince, Truthsheart, is Dragonborn.” [A great beast, black, and silver and the red of dark, dark blood, rises over the edge of a cliff, smoke of eye and fire of breath]. “She is a Healer; she does not read the truth as you do.”