Through Wolf's Eyes (48 page)

"Do you think I enjoyed thanking a common carter for
assisting in my daughter's rescue? Do you think I enjoyed being
reminded that a lesser scion of House Kestrel has been awarded a
knighthood that none of my children will ever have the courage to win?
Sir Jared rushed to your aid though unarmored and not even bearing a
knife! You brag that you defeated two common thugs, yet were it not for
the three who raced to your aid, I doubt that you would have taken out
even one!"

Between clenched teeth Sapphire said defiantly, "When have you even stood before even one opponent?"

Melina remained pitiless. "I am wise enough to know
that a woman can have other strengths—that wisdom and knowledge grant
their own powers. You, however, you care for nothing but posing. You
resent Jet's competition instead of seeing that it matters not which of
you wears the crown. Whoever wears it, my will shall rule!

"Better," Melina continued after pause pregnant with
menace, "that you limit your ambitions to the inheritance you will take
from your father and me. When you inherit your lands and country
manses, then you may prance around in
arms and
armor to your full delight. For now, remember your place and do not put
yourself at risk. I might decide that you are not worth preserving
after all."

She twisted the blue stone at her throat and to
Elise's horror the blood drained from Sapphire's face. This was not
faintness on her cousin's part; it was as if for a moment Sapphire's
body was robbed of blood and breath. Melina changed the sapphire for
the jet stone on her chain. After a horrid moment while the sapphire
swung back and forth, glittering like a fragment of the ocean deeps,
Melina said in almost conversational tones:

"I curse you, my daughter, Sapphire, with pain.
Though the wound in your side has been treated, though it is clean and
good ointments soothe the flesh, though Sir Jared has the talent of
healing, still you shall feel pain there, dull and throbbing as it is
even now. If you should defy me further, then the pain shall become
sharp and keen, as hot as when the knife first sliced your flesh. Thus
pain shall tutor you in prudence until I judge you have learned your
lesson."

Sapphire's hand flew to her bandaged side and she
gasped as if for a stark moment a knife had freshly reopened the wound.
Melina bared her white teeth at her daughter, grimly satisfied.

As Melina reattached the pendants of jet and sapphire
onto their places on her necklace, her gaze fell upon Opal, and the
girl, to this point silent and stolidly calm, paled and trembled.

"And you, Opal," Melina said. "Take these punishments
as a warning unto you. Obey me and perhaps someday I will favor you
with lessons in my craft. Disobey and know my wrath."

"Yes, Mother," the little girl whispered. "I understand."

Melina pressed her hand once again to the gems on her
necklace. "I conjure and bind you all to silence on these matters. The
day has not yet come for my art to be revealed to the masses. Speak of
these doings and it shall be as if red ants bite your tongue. Even as
you suffer, the truth you sought to reveal shall be refashioned into
clever falsehood that shall honor me and defame you."

"Yes, Mother," came three subdued responses.

"Follow me. We have work to do before the diplomats from Bright Bay arrive."

Only as Elise watched the four Shields turn back
toward the encampment did she realize that she had her fingers pressed
to her mouth as if to keep even the faintest sound from coming forth.
Even as she struggled with her fear, Elise could feel a terrible
resolve forming within her, a resolve she dreaded almost as much as she
dreaded Melina's dark arts.

Oh, Mother!
she thought frantically.
You never knew how wrong you were about Lady Melina. She is a sorceress, her powers as wicked as sin!

A terrible thought came to Elise then. What if
Aurella Wellward did know? What if her tongue had been conjured into
silence by Melina, even as Melina had bound her own children? Who could
be trusted to be free of the sorceress's power? How many others might
have been so silenced?

At last, Melina and her children were safely gone.
Pulling herself with effort from her thoughts, Elise became aware that
for some time now Ninette had been murmuring to herself, only now
daring to permit her frantic whispers to become audible.

"Oh, ancestors, protect us from evil magic! Wolf,
Elk, Raven, Bull, Horse, Puma, Bear, Dog, Hummingbird, Deer, Lynx, and
Boar: Gracious Ones, shelter us from harm. Estrella and Rozen, Jinette
and Tunwe . . ." Ninette continued reciting her personal ancestors back
to the days of Queen Zorana and then began on those of the House of the
Eagle, for they were believed to protect all their subjects from harm.

Patting Ninette on the shoulder, Elise joined her in
her prayers. Even as she recited the familiar litany, Elise suspected
that the answer to those prayers might come in a form as mysterious and
terrible as the powers themselves.

A
FTER A NIGHT OF ROAMING
the richly stinking streets of Hope, after bloodshed and battle, sleep
could not enchant Firekeeper. Blind Seer at her side, she darted
through the fringes of farmer's fields, haunted the forests, and
swarmed up the spreading branches of a thick-leafed oak to howl
defiance at the moon. Only when dawn drifted into full daylight—a
late-summer day promising muggy heat rising from the river before
midday—was Firekeeper willing to sleep.

She preferred the forests, cool even in the hottest
parts of the day, especially when compared with the interior of a
canvas tent. Derian had protested, more because Earl Kestrel had
punished him for permitting such wildness than because he saw any harm
in her choice.

Yet, despite her affection for Derian, Firekeeper had
persisted. Stone walls when there had been little other choice had been
tolerable; a canvas box when the trees beckoned a few yards away was
not.

Elation had provided compromise, alerting Derian to
Firekeeper's location and keeping a golden eye bright for the earl.
Should Earl Kestrel begin to harangue Derian, Firekeeper could reappear
before he was fully warmed into his subject.

The earl's need for Firekeeper outweighed his desire
to assert his power, so she could protect Derian. Now that she had
known Earl Kestrel longer, she realized that there was a certain
fairness to him. He assumed that Firekeeper obeyed Derian and thus
Derian was doing his job if Firekeeper did as the earl commanded. If
she did not obey, Derian would be punished.

Firekeeper obeyed nothing but her own impulses, but it didn't bother her if Earl Kestrel believed her controlled.

So as she had since the march from Eagle's Nest to
Hope began, the wolf-woman slipped into the forest. In a tangled copse
of young maple saplings, not far from a narrow thread of a stream, she
pillowed her head on Blind Seer's flank and fell instantly asleep.

The past night's events would not leave her mind to rest. Looping like embroidery thread through a needle's eye, they
stitched out a pattern that gradually mutated into something approaching nightmare.

Shadows and rocks underfoot, round rocks, smooth
like those in a streambed but these are wet by other than good, clean
water. The stream that runs over these rocks is horse piss and dog
piss, man piss and cat piss, vomit and sweat, manure and spilled beer,
the rotted sap of dead vegetation and the salt of ancient tears. Even
when the rain falls it cannot remove the stench entirely. It settles
into the crevices between the rocks and waits for heat to bring it
forth.

Barefoot, Firekeeper runs from cobble to cobble,
feet light and silent. There are no twigs to snap here, no leaves to
crumble and crunch. She feels like a shadow given life and Blind Seer
padding beside her is heralded only by the panicked barking of dogs in
their pathetic yards. Their appeals to their masters bring them no
help, no praise, only angry threats and the occasional thrown shoe.

Partly from pity, partly because their barking
annoys the night, Blind Seer silences the curs with a growled command.
In their secret hearts the dogs are grateful. They retire to doormat or
kennel, wrap their tails about their noses, and try to believe they are
as ignorant as their masters as to what friend of the darkness walks
the streets.

Each place where Derian and Doc halt is a delight
of newness to nose and eye. The tavern at twilight invites care; it is
a busy place. Wolf and woman sniff about the stable-yard, steal scraps
from the trash heap, and marvel at the variety of people coming in and
out the doors. Leaving Blind Seer below, Firekeeper swings onto the
roof to peer into windows on the upper story. Nothing she sees through
the bared windows is precisely new, but much is educational.

So it is with the livery stable and the heavily
scented gardens of the herbalist, Hazel. Then comes the return through
the night, the scream, Sapphire Shield fighting in fierce earnest, the
scent of her sweat cutting sharp and acrid even through the pong of the
streets.

Indecisive, Firekeeper lurks in the shadows,
uncertain whether this is a fight in which another might be welcome.
Only when Derian is endangered does she throw etiquette to
the
winds and bound forth. As she catches him in her arms, the blood
streaming from his wounds alternately red and black in the lamplight,
Blind Seer leaps upon the attacker.

A man is not a wolf. There is no thick ruff to
protect his throat. He is not even a deer with great cabled muscles
beneath a thick hide. He is not even a rabbit who can sometimes shake
loose leaving a mouthful of fur. A man is a pitiful naked beast. One
snap and the red blood is running onto the cobbles, overlaying their
stench with a rich new scent.

Blind Seer vanishes. Firekeeper remains. When
Derian comes to himself, she sees horror and fear in his eyes. Deep
within her, despite the exultation of victory, she is troubled.

Horror and fear in his eyes. A body: the throat a
raw red hole through which life gushes and is gone. Fear and horror in
her heart. A raw red wound gushing life. Hot and blurring in her eyes,
tears salt on her tongue. Hot and terrible in her belly, hunger
refusing the question of right and wrong, living and dying.

Where is the sweet sticky beverage? Day after
day, it had been forced between her lips. Slowly life had returned with
it. Breath had no longer tormented her lungs. Then there had been milk,
sucked from the teat of a she-wolf, girl-child nursing side by side
with blind balls of fur that grew far faster than she.

Blood flowing life-hot from a gaping neck wound,
steaming in the cold of an autumn day. Around her she hears the Ones
growling at the pack to keep their distance. Despite hunger, the girl
cannot drink blood, not with the memory of the doe's soft brown gaze
upon her, with the sharp stink of her panic as the wolves closed upon
her still fresh, not with her last terrified leap for freedom, doomed
before it began, imprinted on her mind.

The girl's stomach roils. The doe's eyes had
reminded her of her own, of those of a sweet-voiced, soft-bodied woman
even now becoming a dream. If she drinks, she kills that woman again.

"So, is the life to be wasted then?"

The girl has no idea who is speaking to her. The voice is familiar, but her memory slides around it, as unable to grasp
its source as her hands are to pick the sunlight from a stream.

"I can't," she sobs. "I'll be sick!"

"Sick? You are sick now. Sick unto dying. How much longer do you insist that others do your living for you?"

"Why live when so many others die?" the little
girl retorts, remembering the cooked-flesh smell of that almost
forgotten woman. "Why me?"

"Fire spared you for a reason. Why can you not accept this?"

Though calm and measured, yet there is a note of impatience in the voice.

"How can I live on others' deaths?" And the death
of which she thinks is not just the death of the doe, but the death of
those others in the fire.

"We all live upon death, even the deer.
There is no escaping that part of the cycle. Your dying will not save
the deer. Your dying will not reverse the fire. Your dying will only
slay others someday."

"What!"

"Nothing more can be said on that matter. Trust me."

"Why?

"I have need of you. Enlightened self-interest is the best reason I can give you."

"I don't understand."

"Nor should you. All you should know is
that your dying will serve no one. Your living may serve many, not the
least of which are those who have labored for your life. Now, drink!"