Wolf's Blood (36 page)

“If possible, get out, no one wiser. If must see people, ask for Peace or Citrine. If no them, then ask for Toriovico, the Healed One.”

“Right,” Derian said. “Don’t hurt anyone. Diplomatic relations between Hawk Haven and New Kelvin are solid these days. You may dismiss your connection to House Kestrel and King Tedric, but if you’re caught skulking in sewers or have to be hauled out of some pit trap, you could do some real damage.”

Firekeeper nodded. “Spy.”

“That’s right. You’d likely be taken for a spy. We know better than most that Toriovico is not an absolute monarch. He needs the goodwill of …”

Firekeeper let the words drift over her ears, heard but not really registered. She didn’t think anyone would catch her and Blind Seer, but she also wasn’t going to risk causing trouble for Hawk Haven, or for Derian and the Nexans.

“You remember the arrangements for getting you back here?” Derian prompted.

“One time each day, same time,” Firekeeper said, “someone here will open gate and check if we need trip back.”

Derian heard the exasperation in her voice and had the grace to look sheepish.

“Sorry. I admit, I’m worried. I’m sending you off on the trail of something as insubstantial as a curse. Who knows whether it’s a waste of time and effort? Worse, what if it isn’t? What if you find someone still alive there? What type of power might an immortal sorcerer have accumulated in the past hundred or so years?”

Firekeeper grinned and touched her Fang.

“Iron should still bite and hard. In forge here they make iron heads for my arrows. Most important, I not forget this. I have not forgotten how Once Dead almost defeat themselves, not us them. I will not forget what we hunt is an strong old one, not a weak one. But think … Can it really live all this time?”

Did Blind Seer already kill him in a dream? Might we simply find what we want waiting?

She didn’t say any of this, but she wanted to reassure Derian.

“Too, we go where my people are. Not all love me as my pack do, is true, but still, Blind Seer and I are of them, and they should help us.”

“That’s true,” Derian said, relaxing some. “You managed well enough on Misheemnekuru, and then again here, and these yarimaimalom are not the ones who raised you. I’ll try and remember that when I wake up in a cold sweat for worry.”

Firekeeper stood on her toes and kissed him on one cheek. Blind Seer gave Derian a sloppy lick, standing on his hind legs to do so. That broke the tension.

“Get out of here, both of you!” Derian laughed.

Firekeeper nicked Blind Seer’s ear, then her own wrist. When the blood from these wounds had been smeared on the gate, Kalyndra began to sing—not just chant as Ynamynet usually did, but sing—the spell that would open the portal. When the rock shimmered and changed character. the wolves strode forward.

They did not look back.

WHEN THEY EMERGED on the other side of the gate, they paused to get their bearings. The one earlier transition that had been performed to test the gate had told them very little.

When Firekeeper had come across with Ynamynet, the area in which they had emerged had been completely dark, so dark that the normally poised Once Dead had reached out and touched Firekeeper on the arm, clearly to reassure herself that the wolf-woman was there. Her hand felt like ice, but other than this sign of fear, Ynamynet had waited with absolute patience until Firekeeper had touched her lips to her ear and given her report.

“No scent, other. than ours. Closedness with sulfur taint. Underground, surely. Dragon’s Breath probably.”

Ynamynet, thoroughly briefed before this as to the basics of New Kelvinese geography, had asked for no explanation, only nodded. Firekeeper had felt the motion.

“Scout?” the wolf-woman had asked. “Or back?”

“Scout a little,” had been Ynamynet’s reply, “but don’t lose me.”

Firekeeper had scouted, but despite her excellent night vision, she could not see where there was no light at all. After stubbing her bare toes a few times—and swallowing the squeak of pain—she had made her way back to Ynamynet.

“Without light, I learn nothing but that I think we are alone.”

“Make a small light,” Ynamynet said. “I’ll need it to get us back in any case.”

Firekeeper had carried a hot coal, candle, and shielded candle lantern. When she kindled a light, the single candle flame seemed impossibly bright. It showed that they were in a spacious subterranean chamber, carved from the living rock. The gate dominated one wall. No other furnishings remained.

In mutual agreement, the Once Dead and the wolf-woman resisted the impulse to scout further. Ynamynet remembered all too well other openings of old gates, done in the days when King Veztressidan was still in power, and she had told Firekeeper tales of times when all that had seemed empty and peaceful had not been so.

Better Firekeeper return with Blind Seer, and hopefully make their departure from this place and New Kelvin, no one the wiser for the invasion.

A full day had passed before they had returned. Now, once again Firekeeper stood in the subterranean chamber deep beneath the capital city of New Kelvin. Even before she felt Blind Seer stiffen at her side, she was aware something had changed.

For one, there was light. Faint light. Either from a dim source or at a distance, but unmistakably light. For another, Firekeeper could smell at least one, probably more than one, person. The New Kelvinese practiced elaborate facial adornment, and the scent of the cosmetics was unmistakable.

Firekeeper slid her Fang from its sheath and held it lightly balanced in her hand. She did not want to kill anyone, but she had no proof that whoever had made the light felt the same.

“Blind Seer,”
she asked.
“What is there?”

A human voice spoke before the wolf could reply.

“I do not think I had really believed the legends,” it said, speaking Pellish in familiar measured tones. “But apparently one can pass through solid stone.”

Firekeeper swallowed an impulse to yip in recognition. The voice belonged to one who had been enemy, then friend, and who might well, in the years that had passed since she had seen him last, be enemy again.

The light had come closer, and she blinked, but did not shield her eyes from its relative brilliance. In it she beheld a slender, elegant man dressed in long-sleeved robes that did not quite conceal that his right arm had been amputated. His bone-white hair had receded so far that all that remained was a long white braid down his back. Round spectacles did not hide several bluish green tattoos on his face, nor were they intended to do so, for such ornaments were not only common, but highly respectable among the New Kelvinese.

Beside Grateful Peace stood someone Firekeeper might not have recognized, for the years passing had changed a round-cheeked child into a girl on the verge of being a woman. Citrine, formerly Shield, now the adopted daughter of Grateful Peace and probably carrying some other name Firekeeper had never learned, stood beside her adopted father. She showed promise of someday matching her sister Princess Sapphire for height and strength. Right now she seemed all arms and legs. Her reddish gold hair was dressed after an elaborate New Kelvinese fashion, and she wore New Kelvinese robes. A tiny stylized figure of some sort was tattooed on her right temple in blue almost the same color as her eyes. Her smile was as warm and enthusiastic as when Firekeeper had first met her as a girl of eight, unhaunted by the madness and sorrow that had still scored her when they had parted.

Reassured by that smile and the fact that no one was calling for guards, Firekeeper decided to match Grateful Peace’s casual tone.

“Is not solid stone,” she said, “or is, but when spell is done, stone opens to gate.”

“Not much more articulate,” Grateful Peace replied, “but still accurate in your own fashion. So this is a magical gate, then. I thought as much when I inspected it earlier, and compared what I saw with what I had read in old books. Do you come from Hawk Haven in this unorthodox fashion?”

Firekeeper shook her head, but chose not to clarify further until she was certain Grateful Peace remained a friend. Given the possibility that she might need to explain how she had come to New Kelvin, Derian and Ynamynet had worked out between them what they thought was safe for her to say.

“Perhaps from that land to the far south,” Peace continued imperturbably. “Liglim, correct? We have had reports, you see. There is even some talk of sending an embassy of our own.”

Firekeeper blinked, deciding to take refuge from a direct answer in pretending not to understand.

Peace glanced past her, and she realized that his seemingly casual conversation had been intended to keep her from insisting they move on while he waited to see if she and Blind Seer were the forerunners of an invading force.

“No one else coming through?” he asked.

Firekeeper shook her head. “Just me and Blind Seer.”

“Is that the whole truth? You see,” Peace smiled, “I have the means of knowing when the gate is used. I would dislike learning you had lied to me.”

“
Tell him
,” Blind Seer said.

“Tomorrow, near this time,” Firekeeper said. “Someone will come to check for us and see if we need to go back. That one will go no further than here to see, then back.”

“So you cannot work this gate yourself?”

Firekeeper shook her head. “No. Is something only one with training can do.”

“And somewhere you have found someone who can open the old gates,” Grateful Peace said. “Interesting indeed. May I invite you to join me for a meal?”

Firekeeper now knew when what sounded like an invitation was in reality an order.

“We come,” she said, and tried to look pleased. It wasn’t that difficult. Citrine was standing with her hands decorously folded in front of her, but her smile hadn’t diminished and there was a hint of a bounce beneath the skirts of her long robe.

“I smell no threat from either of them,”
Blind Seer reported.
“Both smell of pleasure and a bit of astonishment. I would guess that although Peace knew the gate was in use, he did not know who had used it. He is happy to find a friend, not an enemy.”

“Is he armed?”
Firekeeper asked.

“Both he and Citrine carry weapons beneath those full sleeves. I smell the oil used to season the metal. There is the stink of hardened leather as well. I would guess they each wear something to protect their vitals.”

Firekeeper smiled. She was pleased that the intervening years had not diminished in any way Grateful Peace’s guile, and that father seemed to be teaching some of the same skills to daughter. Citrine had been reared to be defenseless, and many had taken advantage of that. There were reasons for Citrine’s smile beyond her pleasure at seeing old friends.

That pleasure was real enough. As Grateful Peace led the way through the tunnels via a route he promised would take them up directly into his own quarters in Thendulla Lypella—the exclusive complex on the northern edge of Dragon’s Breath—Citrine dropped her formality and hurried to give both Firekeeper and Blind Seer hugs.

Her embrace confirmed the presence of armor and weapon, but Firekeeper felt no threat. Her own Fang had returned to its Mouth almost without her being aware. If Blind Seer did not smell threat, there was no threat to fear.

“You are taller,” Firekeeper said, hearing herself sounding like every idiot human she had ever encountered.

“Did you expect her to get smaller?”
Blind Seer sniggered.

Firekeeper ignored him, and Citrine merely straightened a bit in pride.

“I’m not as tall as Sapphire, yet, but I’m taller than Ruby or Opal,” she said proudly.

“Then you see Sapphire?” Firekeeper asked.

“Last autumn,” Citrine said. “She went to Plum Orchard, and we crossed to meet her. She was showing off Sun. He’s a little boy now, not a baby, and talking so almost everyone can understand him.”

Firekeeper smiled. “I not see since Prince Sun he was infant in wraps. Derian say from letters he hear Sun do well, but time goes so far.”

Citrine froze in midstep. “Have you seen Elise? She’s at the embassy in Liglim, too, right? How is she? She and Doc got married you know. Sapphire sends letters, to us here, telling us things, but we haven’t heard much yet this spring. The White Water is still chancy for crossing, and the interior roads slow things further.”

Firekeeper had forgotten how long news took to travel without yarimaimalom willing to serve as couriers.

“I have secret,” the wolf-woman said. “Can you keep? Peace, too?”

Grateful Peace had been undoing some locks on a heavy iron gate. “Unless it affects the safety of New Kelvin, I can keep a secret.”

Firekeeper grinned. “No such. Elise and Doc have baby girl. She is very small still. Called Elexa, for the queen.”

Citrine lifted her long skirts and did a frolicking dance in the corridor. Grateful Peace was more formal, but he looked equally pleased.

“Elexa,” Citrine said. “That’s good. Grand Duchess Rosene can’t be annoyed at the baby not being named for her—even if it is her first granddaughter—if the baby is named for the queen. She’ll probably praise Elise for her political sense.”

Firekeeper had almost forgotten the touchy politics of Hawk Haven’s ruling families in the years she had been away. After the small-town simplicity of the Nexus Islands, and the regimented hierarchy of the Liglimom, they seemed more chaotic than ever.

Peace seemed to sense Firekeeper’s sudden dismay, and gestured them through the newly opened gate. On the other side was a small foyer leading into a long flight of steep stairs cut directly into the rock.

“Enough chatter now. Citrine. Run ahead and make certain none of the servants are about and in a position to gossip. In fact, send any who are about home early. We can make do for ourselves and our guests.”

Citrine responded with an alacrity that told Firekeeper that she was accustomed to such commands. Grateful Peace locked the gate behind them and gestured up the stairs.