Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories (41 page)

“You will.”

Speer shrugged and reached out to the little pup. Then he jerked upright, pulled his hand away, and very nearly shrieked. Without warning, the pup had transformed itself into a perfect facsimile of a healthy human baby, smiling and staring up into Speer’s face. And when Speer, astonished and not quite able to believe what he’d seen, stepped back from the pups, it just as rapidly transformed a second time, and, with the exception of its darker coloring, became indistinguishable from its brothers and sisters.

“Did you see that!”

“I did indeed.” The demon licked the little pup affectionately. “I salute you, Ar Dauragh. I believe the sword of your vengeance has been forged!”

The pups grew rapidly. They were quick to anger and just as quick to forget. They mercilessly plagued the cats of Mordlis stalking them and chasing them until the hissing cats finally climbed to the rafters to escape. And what few rats the cats happened to miss, the pups were sure to slay. The castle was soon more free of vermin than it had ever been. They had language of a sort, although Speer could not understand more than a few guttural words that revolved around their primary interest: food. The black one soon showed himself to be the leader. He was the biggest, the strongest, and the most fearless, shamelessly using his ability to change between what Speer thought of as their natural shape and his other two forms as the situation required.

Speer had thought to raise them in the castle, but six months after their birth, the sounds of a commotion below woke him, and he rushed down the stairs from his tower, only to learn that the pups were gone. The two tongueless men who had been on guard duty outside were dead, their throats cleanly slashed, and the small door from the kitchen was unlocked. For a moment, Speer wondered if someone had broken in and stolen his progeny, until a thought occurred to him, and he descended down the spiral staircase into the dungeon.

It was as he feared. The door to the cage in which the pups’ mother had been kept was hanging open. The key was inside the lock, the key which he had carelessly left on a hook on the wall underneath the nearest rushlight holder. The hook would have been well within the reach of any of the pups, even the smallest female, as standing upright, their heads already reached his chest.

“You needn’t worry,” he heard Scaum-Durna say. “It was bound to happen.”

He whirled around and glared at the giant wolf, angry at the demon’s calm response to the disaster.

“Did you help them?”

“Me? No, I knew nothing of it until I heard you stomping around and shouting.” The demon shook its shaggy grey head and laughed. “Little brother, did you think to control a spirit as fell and fiery as the one that burns inside them? Even though each of them carries inside but a part of that which was once our brother Vorbis, they cannot bear to be under the control of another. They are not a weapon to be wielded in your hand like a sword. They are more akin to an earthquake or a vast conflagration. You created them, now you must trust in your creatures to find their own way to accomplish your will. You are their father and their creator, but you will never be their master.”

“But it is dangerous out there,” Speer protested. “There are wolves and bears. The Dalarn will fear them and hunt them down when they learn of their existence.”

“They are still young, and already your veteran guardsmen are no match for them. Don’t fear for your wolflings, Ar Dauragh. If you would fear for someone, fear for those wolves and bears and men upon whom they will sharpen their teeth. Before your wolves can war upon the elves, they must grow strong, and to grow strong, they must learn to fight for their lives. You must leave them to it, lest you weaken them with your succor.”

Speer sighed. “You’re right, of course. If they are too weak to survive on their own, they will be too weak to defeat the elves. But it is hard, Scaum-Durna. It is hard to see them go.”

“I know. But be patient. Soon the mountains will ring with the terror of their howls.”

• • •

Despite the demon’s reassurances, Speer fretted. For three years, his studies languished and dust gathered on the codices in the library as he spent hours every day wandering through the hills and woods around Mordlis, looking for signs that his wolflings still survived. Three times, he thought he had discovered signs of their dens, but one was empty and in the other two cases the dens were inhabited by ordinary wolves.

He suspected Scaum-Durna knew where they were, for the demon had uncharacteristically retained its lupine form and often disappeared into the darkness when night fell, sometimes failing to return for days at a time. But the demon resolutely refused to tell him anything about its nocturnal wanderings, not even when it returned to Mordlis with an open gash on its shoulder that looked as if it had been inflicted by a beast with a very large jaw.

Then one day, after it had been gone for nearly a week, Speer was surprised to see a man riding along the grassy track from Stammløse on a black horse. He was even more surprised when he went out to meet the man and saw from his eyes that Scaum-Durna lurked within him.

“I see you’ve abandoned the wolf.”

“Go to the stables and find yourself a horse. I think you’ll want to see this.”

His interest piqued, Speer did as he was told and soon was galloping after the demon over the hills to the east of Mordlis. They rode for nearly two hours, through copses of ash and beech, and through meadows of tall grass that rose nearly to his horse's belly. Only when they reached the top of a large hill with a gentle incline did Scaum-Durna stop and bid him to dismount.

The demon dismounted as well and pointed toward a forest to the southeast.

“We can’t get any closer or they’ll notice.”

His heart pounding with anticipation, Speer reached out and drew from a dancing sky ley and sharpened his vision until he had the eyes of an eagle. What he saw filled him with relief and a fierce, exultant joy.

There were six pups gamboling about a field near the distant treeline far below. They were young, perhaps four months old, but they retained their human limbs and wolfish heads, and they snapped at each other as they play-fought with the same unrestrained vigor Speer remembered so vividly from three years ago. And as he watched, one of the pups, pinned down by its fellow, transformed into its wolf form and slipped out of the erstwhile victor’s grasp, then transformed again and leaped back into the fray.

Then all the pups froze, went bolt upright, and whirled around in response to something Speer could not hear. A moment later, he saw a tall black-furred beast-man appear at the edge of the forest, gesticulate at the six of them, then turn around and vanish, obscured by the trees. The pups dashed after him, and they too disappeared into the woods.

Speer turned to Scaum-Durna, unashamed of the tears that wet his cheeks. “They live! They breed!”

The demon nodded, its eyes narrow with pride and satisfaction.

“Thank you. I cannot thank you enough for what you have done. I know you have been watching over them.”

“They are my children too, in a way, little brother. If you are their father, does that not give me the right to call myself their uncle? In truth, I have done very little. They do not merely survive, they thrive. This is the second litter of three. The changer fathered eleven more cubs on the other two bitches.”

“I saw the one change. Are there any changers in the other litters?”

“Two in the first, one in the third. They all breed true. And they are killers. I got too close once and one of the grey males nearly tore my throat open.”

“I remember the scar.” Speer stared at the meadow, knowing that against all the odds, despite all the sacrifices it had required, his father’s last vision had not been for naught. Even from the grave, the Witchkings would claim their revenge against the unsuspecting enemy. His father had not lived to see the day. He would not see it himself. But even so, it would come. One day, his wolves, his children, his vengeance, would arise and devour the world.

That night was one for celebration in silent Mordlis. Even the grave tongueless men were visibly cheered to hear the news of the pups’ survival. It seemed they had come to feel affection for the wolflings and did not bear them any grudge for the deaths of their fellows killed in the escape. Speer drank considerably more than he should have, and it was with some difficulty that he navigated the stairs up to his tower.

He collapsed on the bed, face-down, and did not bother to close the door to the chamber. He was still lying there, sound asleep and snoring, when a black-and-white cat padded softly into the room.

Speer thought he was dreaming when he felt someone roll him over onto his back. He opened his eyes and found a strange woman with golden skin and inhuman green eyes bestriding him. She ran her hands down his torso, and her fingernails sliced his tunic open as neatly as if she was holding razors. She was beautiful, her touch inflamed his flesh, and her six breasts were small, but well-formed—six breasts!

Speer sat up violently and tried to throw the demon off him, but she was suddenly far too heavy for him to move, and she easily pushed him back down onto the bed.

Her eyes flared with emerald anger and she bared her teeth, revealing small, wicked fangs that resembled those of a cat.

“You fathered that race of wolves, now you will give me my own flesh-children!” she hissed.

“I’ll give you nothing, demon bitch!” Speer roared and he spat a spell at her, powerful enough to shatter any lesser demon and to give even the greatest foul spirit pause.

The she-devil only laughed. “Do you think me one of the wretched soulless, magician?” As he looked up at her in horror, two inky wings of darkest shadow erupted from her shoulders and arched forward to stroke his face with soft black feathers that burned his skin like ice.

“I was once called Baastiel. Did you truly think it was an accident that Scaum-Durna found the feather you needed for your spell so easily?”

“I will not cast the spell for you!”

“I am no fell spirit, magician. I cast my own spells. You know the only thing I need from you.”

Speer tried to resist, tried to fight the treacherous instincts of his body, but when the fallen angel changed its shape and took the voluptuous form of Her, with her sweetly bland peasant’s face, her thick, muscular hips and large maternal breasts, its betrayal was complete. He groaned and, helpless before the illusion of his earliest desire, reached for her.

• • •

The old woman nodded as Sigurd, the eldest of the mute castle guards, signed the bad news to her as she finished washing the last of the men’s wooden breakfast platters. She wasn’t upset. She wasn’t even surprised to hear that the young master had finally come to a dreadful end. She had known such an ending was inevitable since the filthy demon began parading itself around Mordlis with its fat paps on display as if it was doling out sweets. The old woman had no idea what the nature of the relationship between the young master and the demon had been, but the strange man whose shape it was wearing last night appeared to have disappeared too. Good riddance, as far as she was concerned.

“Them as lay down with devils got no cause for crying when they can’t get up again,” she told the black-and-white cat lazing about in the morning sun. “Little monsters and pet wolves, and the gods know what other devilries the young master got hisself up to in that tower. He should have stuck with bedding the local gals, if he knowed what was good for him.”

The cat stared at her, unblinking and indifferent, before stretching and sprawling out stiff-legged on the warm stone floor. There must be a good bit of mice about, thought the old woman, because the moggy looked uncommon fat for summertime.

She sighed, thinking about how many times she’d have to walk up the stairs to the tower carrying a bucket of hot water. Perhaps she could convince Sigurd to tell one or two of his men to help her once they’d removed the young master’s body, or what was left of it. She reached down and picked up her cropped-straw scrub brush, then wiggled her arthritic fingers and winced. Scrubbing the bloodstains out of wood was always a trial.

FINIS

IT WAS A BAD TIME to be a goblin in Ummat-Mor. Not only had the kingdom nearly been brought to its knees by a series of unsuccessful wars against the Iron Mountain dwarves, but two years ago a new and dangerous threat had arisen in the north, in the form of the Troll King. Rightly skeptical of his army’s ability to fend off the Troll King’s dark and terrible forces, King Weezabreth had not been tardy in rushing to the side of his distant demi-cousin, the Great Orc Gwarzul Headsmasher, Warleader and Skullcrusher Supreme of the Zoth Ommog sept.

Thus it was that Ummat-Mor had survived twenty moons of bitter warfare, albeit at a steep price. Perhaps the kingdom had not been sold outright to their larger, lighter-skinned ur-brethren, but many goblins felt things could not have been much worse if that had been the case. The mayor of even the smallest village now enjoyed the imposing company of an orc advisor, whose presence was inarguably helpful in collecting the steep war tax imposed by the goblin king at the suggestion of the Great Orc, and twice a year, bands of young male goblins were forcibly assembled and marched off to the north, seldom to be seen again.

This latter fact was why Bextor Fenwick took little pride in his lofty title, Lieutenant Commander of the armed militia of Wiccam Fensboro, despite having attained it at the tender age of nine. He was tall for a swamp goblin, nearly four foots tall, as a matter of fact, and he carried himself with the air of confidence borne by one who knows how to use his weapons. As befitted an officer of militia, he was a good marksman, and if his sword work left something to be desired, well, he preferred a lance anyhow.

His mount at the moment was whining pitifully at him, having spotted a deceased squirrel lying near the foot of a large tree. Bextor, feeling rather hungry himself, sniffed at the air and recoiled at the overpowering rotstink.