Wolf-speaker (15 page)

“You're up,” said Maura. “I wanted to wake you for breakfast—I was afraid you'd sleep all day—but Tkaa said leave you be.” She came over with a steaming mug and set it on the ground as Daine sat up. “I hope you don't mind me'n Kitten getting in your things. I didn't bring any food, and we were
starving
. I found your tea, and the wolves found a beehive, so me'n Kitten had honey for our porridge, and I made tea with honey for you.”

“Thanks.” Half-awake, Daine asked the first question that came to mind, the one she ought to
have asked more firmly the day before. “Why'd you run off?”

The younger girl looked down. “I can't say.”

Daine sniffed her tea: it smelled wonderful. “You must. If you had a spat with Yolane, or if you think it's fun to live out in the woods like me, that's no good. You'll have to go home.”

“What if she wants to send me to school to be a lady, and I want to go to court and be a knight?”

Under Daine's sharp look the girl reddened. “You've heard too many tales about the King's Champion. I'm not here for fun, Maura, and it's wrong to run off for fun. Leaving home's serious.” Remembering the wreck of her own home, she added, “You're lucky to have a place that's yours. You don't just throw that away.” She grinned. “And I doubt you'd have any luck as a knight. You screech whenever you see something odd.”

Maura smiled, then looked at her hands. “I
have
to see the king. I can't say why. I know girls my age aren't supposed to know important stuff, but I do, and he has to know.”

“If it's that Tristan is making trouble for Tortall, you're behind the fair,” Daine replied. “We know he's in the Carthaki emperor's service. Numair went out of the valley so he could report to the king and get help. As soon as he does, he'll be back.”

Maura looked at Daine with a frown. “Is that all you know? About Tristan?”

“I know for a fact he brought Tkaa here.”

“For which I am grateful,” a whispery voice said from the entrance.

Daine squeaked and lunged for her crossbow. Maura rescued the endangered mug of tea. When Daine brought the cocked and loaded bow to bear on the entrance, she saw only Tkaa and Kitten. “Who said that?” she demanded.

The basilisk stared at her. “I
told
you my people speak all tongues.” The whispery voice did come from his mouth. “The only reason I did not address Lady Maura in this wise from the first was that my skills were rusty. In the Divine Realms and with you it is easier to speak mind-to-mind.”

“Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith,” Daine breathed. “I don't know what to say.”

“Then say nothing,” advised Tkaa as he put Kitten down. “That is best.”

Still unnerved by hearing him speak human, Daine got clothing out of her packs and took it into her bedroll to dress. As she did, wriggling under the covers, she heard Maura tell the basilisk, “We need to think about laundry and supplies. I can't eat all Daine's food.”

If Tkaa answered, his voice was drowned out by a sound. Once Daine had heard a great bell, its sides as thick as her hand, clang as it was struck with a mallet. This noise was similar, but so loud it made her teeth and ears ache. Hundreds of yards away,
cushioned from the outer air by tons of rock, the Song Hollow bats heard it and were startled into flight. Cloud neighed in protest outside; Kitten dived into Daine's blankets, pulling them over her tender ears. Tkaa clapped his forepaws over his earholes and shut his eyes in pain.

“What was that?” cried Maura.

It came again, so loud it pressed on Daine's eardrums. Where? she asked the bats, knowing they could pinpoint it. Confused and frightened, they sent an image of the western pass as it would appear to them, painted in sound at night.

She grabbed her crossbow and quiver. Barefoot, shirt half-tucked into her breeches, she ran outside. Cloud followed at a gallop, and when she drew alongside, Daine leaped onto the pony's back in a trick learned from the Riders. As the mare raced for the barrier, Daine counted the bolts in her quiver with her fingers: ten. She hoped that would be enough if Stormwings caught her in the open.

When they reached the barrier, they saw no one. Daine could hear a marmot scolding on the other side of the magical wall. “If you see any danger, nip me or something,” she ordered her mare, and sat down. Closing her eyes, she listened for the marmot.

She found her quarry instantly. The marmot, a female, was on the sloping ground that was the southern wall of the pass, guarding the entrance to the burrow she shared with her large family.

Shocked, frightened, and irate, she was calling the man below names that Daine hadn't thought a marmot would use.

You must have learned that from squirrels, she commented. None of the marmots
I
know ever said such things.

They weren't scared out of their wits, retorted the chubby rodent. I was minding my own business, standing watch, and the two-legger made that noise. He scared me out of a month's fat! I'll have to eat
twice
as much now to be ready for the Big Cold and—Look at him! He's going to do it again!

If you do I will bite you! she screamed at the man. I don't care if you kill me, I will take a big chunk out of you before I'm dead!

May I? asked Daine, and slipped into the marmot so she could see with her hostess's eyes. At the spot where the barrier closed the way into the pass stood two horses and a tall, lanky human. He was raising his hands again. Sweat trickled down his face as black fire gathered around his palms. He shouted something and hurled the fire at the barricade.

The noise was so loud that Daine was jolted back into her own body. “Tkaa!” she called.

—
I am here
.—The basilisk had caught up with her while Daine was speaking with the marmot. He looked a bit odd: someone, probably Maura, had wrapped cloth around his head to protect his earholes.

“It's Numair—my teacher.”

—
A
mortal
is doing that?
—

“Would you cross and tell him to stop? Oh, wait—perhaps he's doing it to break down the barrier. If he is, would you ask him how long it will take, so I can warn my friends? I suppose he'll want to know about the Coldfang, and you should tell him Maura's with us.”

—
Let me go
,—said Tkaa, sounding faintly amused.—
You may think of other things for me to tell him while I am gone
.—He walked over to the barrier and was halfway through when Daine remembered something else.

“Tkaa, wait!”

He looked at her.—
Quickly, if you please. This is not comfortable
.—

“If you can go through, Stormwings can go through. Warn him, please. They might be on their way now, if Tristan heard all this racket.”

The basilisk walked through the barrier. Daine looked at Cloud. “I need my writing kit. Tkaa doesn't know all I've learned, and Numair has to be warned.” She stopped. In her mind she heard approaching Stormwings. “We've got trouble,” she said, and mounted the pony. “What did Tkaa call them? Flappers?”

Just what we need, replied the mare.

In the distance she heard Maura say pleadingly, “Go away!
Please
!”

Cloud picked up her pace, and they rounded a bend. Maura stood where the trail to the caves met the pass road. Above her was a flock of Stormwings.

“Maura, get
down
!” shouted Daine. Cloud stopped as she brought the crossbow to bear on one of the monsters.

“No!”
Maura lunged at Daine, grabbing for the bow. Her weight dragged Daine's arm down. For one perilous moment the crossbow was aimed point-blank at the ten-year-old's chest. Cloud reared. Maura lost her grip on the bow, and Daine swung it away from her. She was trembling in fear and anger.

“Don't
ever
do that again!” she cried. “I could have
killed
you!”

“I'm sorry,” Maura said, looking down. “But I couldn't let you hurt them.”

Stormwings were landing on the ground in front of them. Three moved out of Daine's sight. Turning, she saw them settle on the road behind her, cutting off any escape. Coldly she leveled her weapon at the nearest Stormwing, a male who wore a collection of bones braided into his long blond hair.

He stared back at her, contempt in his eyes, then looked at the younger girl. “Tell her we mean you no harm, Lady Maura.”

“You're on speaking terms with
them
?” Daine asked.

Maura shrugged. “They visit Yolane and Belden a lot. He is Lord Rikash.”

“And
she
is a Stormwing killer,” barked the snarl-haired brunette who had spoken to Tkaa the day before. “She slew one of our queens last year!”

“She tried to kill me,” Daine snapped. “It was a fair fight—a lot fairer than she deserved.”

Rikash hopped around Maura and stopped near Cloud, looking her and her rider over with chilly green eyes. The mare had seen his kind before. While their scent of rotten meat and bad death hurt her nose, she had learned to stand fast when they were near. She eyed Rikash, small ears flat against her skull. Daine knew what was in the pony's mind: one more hop and he'd be in range for a bite.

Don't hit the feathers, warned Daine silently. They'll cut your mouth.

Don't teach your dam to nurse a foal, Cloud retorted.

“You are quick to judge us, Stormwing killer,” Rikash snarled. “Too quick, for a
human
. You come from a race that spends more time murdering your
own
kind than do all the immortals put together, yet you insist you are better than us.” He spat on the ground, and looked at Maura. “You cannot leave Dunlath, and you must not stay here. Come home. Yolane doesn't need to know you were away.”

“You mean she hasn't noticed I'm gone,” Maura said bitterly. “Has anyone?”

“That is unjust,” the Stormwing replied, firmly and gently. “You know very well that the cook and your nurse are frantic that you've vanished.”

“I left them notes. I told them not to worry.”

There was something odd between these two, Daine realized. The immortal spoke to Maura with affection. That was impossible. Stormwings were cruel, heartless: she had enough experience of them to know that. Worse, Maura addressed Rikash as she might an older brother or an uncle.

Watching the immortals, Daine saw that she needed help. Starlings gathered with the coming of fall, to gossip and to migrate. Nearby she found three such flocks, each with over fifty birds, and called them to the trees and rocks around her before she looked again at Maura and Rikash. “Do you know what
his
sort do?” she asked the younger girl. “They befoul the dead who fall in battle. They live on human fear and anger. They're monsters!”

Maura shrugged thin shoulders. “They can't help how they're
made
, Daine.”

“Maura”—Rikash shook his head—“you can't just run away from home. And
you
shouldn't encourage her,” he told Daine. “You're old enough to know better.”

“I already know better,” retorted Maura.

Daine glared at the Stormwing. “I
haven't
been encouraging her. I
tried
to make her go back.
You're
the one with the wings—
you
take her.”

Maura sat on the ground, chin sticking out. “I won't go back, and you can't make me. They're traitors. I won't stay under the same roof with them. My father would haunt me all my life if I did.”

“Let us talk of this away from prying ears,” Rikash said, an eye on Daine.

“We can speak of it now. Daine can't tell anyone. She's stuck here, too!”

“Quiet!” ordered the Stormwing. “You're a
child
. You do not understand what is taking place, and you must not speak of matters you cannot comprehend.”

Her sense of humor overpowering her hatred of Stormwings, Daine looked down so Rikash wouldn't see her smile. Obviously he liked Maura, or he would have bullied rather than debated her. She also could see debate was useless. Maura had the bit between her teeth and would not obey orders. “Go on,” she urged the fuming immortal. “Shut her up. I never thought to see you stinkers balked by anyone, let alone a ten-year-old.”

Rikash turned red under his dirt, and a few of his own flock cackled. “It is hard for us to bear young,” he said, a hint of gritted teeth in his voice. “That being the case, we value others' young, particularly when they are neglected. Affection has led me to indulge Lady Maura more than is wise.”

Maura sighed. “All right, Lord Rikash. I'll hush. Only, I'm not coming back with you. You don't have to tell them you saw me.”

Rikash shook his head. “If you were mine, I would beat you,” he said with grim resignation. He looked up at Daine, eyes sharp. “As for
you
—”

Daine grinned, and made a silent request of the starlings. They set up a clamor, flapping their wings and voicing painfully shrill,
loud
whistles. “Go on,” she told Rikash, raising her voice to be heard. “Take me in. You might last two or three minutes in the air with my friends going for your eyes.”

The Stormwings looked at the birds with alarm. Starlings, cowards and clowns alone or in small groups, were bullies in a flock. Their whistles alone made the immortals try unsuccessfully to cover their ears.

“The gods help you if I catch you in the open,” Rikash snarled, flapping his wings. “Maura, you had better rethink your choice of friends!” The Stormwings took to the air as the starlings jeered and insulted them. Wheeling, the immortals flew straight at the barrier and passed through.

“But what about your friend?” Maura cried, grabbing Daine's arm. “It was him making the noise, wasn't it? They might hurt him!”