Wolf's Blood (3 page)

The silence was getting distinctly uncomfortable. Derian didn’t know whether he wanted lsende to leave or whether he wanted her to stay until he could make her smile again.

Poor return for Nende’s friendship and sympathy, Derian Carter,
he chided himself,
making the poor girl feel miserable and alone. Say something! Anything! Otherwise, she’s going to walk out of here, and leave you by yourself feeling like something Eshinarvash leaves on the stable floor.

“I …” he was starting when the how of a wolf. the note falling from high to low broke the stillness of the afternoon.

“Firekeeper.” he said, feeling such, relief that he didn’t even mind when he realized that his right ear had automatically swiveled to track the sound. “Back from the mainland.”

Plik had been the first to start referring to the New World as the “mainland” a habit evolved from his own life prior to coming to the Nexus Islands when he along with the small communnity of maimalodalum, had lived on Center Island at the heart of Misheemnekuru. The other residents from the New World—Derian. Plik, Eshinarvash. Truth, and Harjeedian—had adopted the custom with alacrity.

As Harjeedian had said showing far more vulnerable humanity than Derian had thought possible “Calling the New World our mainland gives us roots, a sense that there is something to which we are connected.”

And the New World residents all needed that feeling of connectedness. While Firekeeper. Blind Seer. and assorted Wise Beasts tended to commute back and forth between the Nexus Islands and the mainland, the other five had opted for more or less permanent residence on the Nexus Islands. They were needed there, for although the Old World residents had thus far honored the agreement they had made following their defeat the previous autumn, none of the New Worlders were so naive as to believe they would continue to do so without supervision.

It all comes down to querinalo.
Derian thought.
If there was no querinalo, we could instate rotating shifts here, like an army in the field on a crew aboard a ship, but because of querinalo we dare not. None of us who has lived through that horrible fever could ask infacting it on weather and since
we
cannot tell for certain who will catch if and who will not …

The thought continued on like a cart wheel rolling down a well-worn rut in a dirt road. but this time the wheel hit a rock and went bouncing off down the embankment

I don’t want to go home I just can’t hear the idea of how my folks would look at me but I don’t want to stay here forever and ever and ever

Each “ever” sounded like the clash of an iron wheel rim against rock. and on the fast clash Firekeeper burst through the front door. Overall the wolf-woman had improved a great deal about remembering little social courtesies like knocking on doors, but when she was excited social graces went out the window

Of rather.
Derian thought
with mild amusement Firekeeper should come through the w if the do wouldn’t open

Isende locked less horrified than she might at the sight of the lithe. lean young woman and the enormous wolf now bursting through the door.

But then, Isende has known Firekeeper for moonspans now, long enough to be catty about her manners—or lack thereof. And maybe having your brother live in the back of
your head most of your life given you a bit of flexibility about the conventions.

The thought teased Derian as the beginning of something interesting, but before he could pursue it, Firekeeper flung herself down on his hearth rug and said, “Derian, I need to talk to you.”

Isende rose. her posture every bit as polite and proper as Firekeeper’s had not been.

“I should be going.” she began but the words were hardly out of her mouth before Firekeeper was flapping her hand in an indication that Isende should resume her place.

“No. Is not to say I have a secret to talk. You would be good to hear this, too.”

Derian sighed. As always when she was away from human conversation for more than a few days, Firekeeper’s syntax went to pieces.

Probably out of courtesy to Isende, Firekeeper had been speaking in Liglimosh, the dominant language of the southern nation of Liglim and many of the bordering city-states—including Gak, where Isende and her brother Tiniel had been born. Had Derian been the only one present, Firekeeper doubtless would have spoken Pellish, the language of Hawk Haven and Bright Bay, allied kingdoms that had been founded by the same Old World nation.

The odd thing was that Derian had noticed how Firekeeper was perfectly capable of proper grammar and syntax, but she seemed to reserve these for either those times she must translate for others, or those rare occasions that she wanted to make absolutely certain she was not misunderstood.

I suppose I should be glad Firekeeper is bilingual—at least after a fashion. Trilingual, if I count whatever it is she speaks to the Beasts. When I met her, all she could speak was Beast talk, and I’m still not convinced that counts. Less than ever, since we discovered that while I can now understand Eshinarvash and the other Wise Horses I can’t “speak horse” back at them, nor can I speak any Beast language at all. There’s so much I don’t understand … .

These thoughts passed through Derian’s mind in the time it took Firekeeper to convince Isende that she was entirely welcome.

“Derian,” Firekeeper said when they were all settled. “I think I need to go and find where querinalo comes from. It is dangerous, to us, to our homes. We need to find it, so we can end it.”

The effort the wolf-woman made to insure that she could not be misunderstood made Derian perfectly certain that she was serious.

“And how are you going to find where querinalo comes from?” he asked, trying not to sound like he was humoring her. “Does querinalo have a scent by which you can track it?”

“It has a scent,” Firekeeper said, “if not one I can use to track. I was thinking you could track for me—you and Harjeedian and Ynamynet and all the rest.”

“What?”

“Like Lady Melina find the Dragon of Despair,” Firekeeper said. “She find it, so Toriovico tell us later, through old stories. There must be stories from the time before querinalo came. Maybe even there are stories about how it began. The New World does not have them, because we always told that it come from the Old World, but the Old World must have stories.”

Derian felt some doubt, but Isende was nodding.

“Firekeeper could be right,” she said. “If not stories, then histories, records that tell where querinalo first appeared and how it spread. Was it like a bout of late-summer spots, spreading from person to person, or did it come in waves, like the sneezing fits that come with the blooming of certain flowers?”

“Would there be records like that?” Derian asked. “My understanding is that the upheavals and chaos that happened in the New World after querinalo took hold were nothing to what happened in the Old World. In the New World the abandoned colonies had to make do without their rulers and the support of the Old World, but if those tales Urgana likes to tell are representative it seems to me that the Old World fell apart completely.”

“But not all at once,” Isende insisted. “There was more structure in place in the Old World. As Urgana tells it, the rulers did their best to conceal what was happening. There must be records, archives, something …”

“But how do we find those?” Derian asked. “If they’re anywhere, they’re in the Old World, and we’re here on the Nexus Islands.”

“Nexus,” Isende said thoughtfully. “Crossroads. Meeting point. A neutral ground between areas that otherwise were rivals. And after the collapse, the Nexus Islands were abandoned for a long, long while. They’ve only been reinhabited for ten years or so, and many of the old buildings are still untouched.”

Derian stared at her. “Are you saying the answers might be right here?”

Isende grinned at him. “We won’t know unless we look, will we?”

II

  A GREAT DEAL had changed in the not quite five moonspans since Firekeeper and her allies had taken control of the Nexus Islands.

Buildings served different purposes. Almost every resident had been relocated to a different dwelling. The menagerie cages had been torn down. A vegetable garden was planned for that particular location.

One thing remained the same. Ynamynet the Once Dead remained the preeminent spellcaster on the Nexus Island. She was no longer the only one, as she had been when the agreement between the residents of the Nexus Islands had been made. However, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Ynamynet was the most important.

Even so, when Firekeeper knocked on the door of the building that served as both Ynamynet’s home and office, the sorcerer answered the door herself. Of medium height, her thick, light brown hair braided long down her back, one hand still holding a damp cloth, Ynamynet did not at this moment look much like a powerful wielder of magic.

Firekeeper glimpsed the retreating form of the little girl fleeing down the hallway toward the back of the house, caught the scent of strawberry jam, and guessed that they had interrupted the sorcerer immersed in one of her other identities, that of mother to a lively little girl everyone called Sunshine.

Ynamynet’s neutral expression changed to one of surprise when she saw who her callers were. She motioned them inside with her damp cloth.

“Firekeeper, Blind Seer … I didn’t know you had returned. Counselor Derian, Isende … Please come inside. Everyone keeps saying that spring is here, but I for one find the weather still rather cold.”

The human callers accepted Ynamynet’s invitation with alacrity, for the winds coming off the oceans were indeed chilly. Firekeeper and Blind Seer followed without the same impetus. Neither of them found the weather anything other than invigorating.

Ynamynet left them in a sunny front room, promising to return. Soft-voiced conversation in a language Firekeeper didn’t know followed by a muted clattering of pots and plates hinted at possible refreshments. A squeal of protest indicated that Sunshine was having her face scrubbed, but when Ynamynet returned, her expression was tranquil and a touch more composed than it had been when they had arrived.

“I apologize for calling unannounced.” Derian began, “but Firekeeper has a question for you.”

“And Firekeeper will not be kept waiting,” Ynamynet said with a smile. She had brought a fur-trimmed robe with her, and pulled it on as she arrayed herself in a chair she moved to where it would be in the sun coming through the window. Firekeeper found herself sweating just looking at her, but Ynamynet looked comfortable.

There was no real annoyance in Ynamynet’s tone, just a statement of fact: Firekeeper was one who Could not be kept waiting. Firekeeper felt pleased. Wolves value their privileges highly. Besides, she approved of Ynamynet. The woman was brave and devoted. If she had a tendency toward—not treachery … that wouldn’t be a fair description. There is no treachery when a mother bird feigns a broken wing to protect her fledgling.

“Is important,” Firekeeper assured their host. “We want to know what is said about where querinalo came from.”

Ynamynet glanced at Derian as if waiting for clarification, and when the young man added nothing, frowned slightly.

“Where querinalo came from? I don’t know. It has been a bane—that’s what we called it in my homeland, ‘the Bane’ or ‘the sorcerer’s bane’—for something like a hundred and fifty years. It wiped out the sorcerers who once ruled the Old World and the New. Apparently, it then left the New World alone, but the Bane continues to kill and mutilate residents of the Old World to this very day.”

“But you not know where it come from?” Firekeeper asked. “Not even in stories?”

“You mean like the stories the Liglim tell? About how the Bane was sent as divine retribution against those who abused the gifts of magic?”

Firekeeper inclined her head in acknowledgment.

“No.” Ynamynet’s tone was bitter. “I have no such stories, and my family was descended from the very sorcerers who once ruled our land and many others.”

Derian spoke very gently. “What about enemies? I have heard some say that the Plague might not have been a disease at all, but rather a magical curse. Could someone have created a curse and then that curse have gotten out of hand?”

Ynamynet regained her composure. “I suppose that’s possible, although it seems idiotic to me that someone would create a curse that might backwash so horribly.”

“Still,” Isende said softly, “you admit it’s possible.”

“Anything’s possible,” Ynamynet replied. “Including deities capable of such incredible cruelty. I know you New Worlders don’t think highly of what the sorcerer monarchs did. All you remember are the tales of their cruelty and abuse. You forget the wonderful things they did as well.”

She motioned to the lantern that waited on the table to be lit when evening came.

“They had lights that didn’t smoke or smell. They could travel vast distances in moments. They could heal wounds with a touch. Some say they could even defy old age and death. I’m sure that many of them were perfectly good and just rulers, but no one ever remembers those who rule over them with any fondness—especially when those rulers are forced to be strict. Right now Sunshine thinks I’m an absolute tyrant because I won’t let her eat all the jam she wants and then run about sticky afterwards.”