Wolf's Blood (75 page)

“Think, rather,” Firekeeper said, stroking him from shoulder to the base of his tail, “that I am willing to find hope anywhere I can, even if that means a friend would be faithless.”

THE SETTING SUN stronghold had been well and strongly built. Even a century of neglect could not undo solid craft. The thick, high exterior wall still stood, weathered but with hardly a hint of crumbling. The shell of the house within that wall had its share of weathered shutters and broken windows, but was otherwise solid.

When Firekeeper and Blind Seer had first seen the Setting Sun stronghold, it had been so encased not only in the natural vines, grasses, shrubs, and brambles one might expect, but also in an illusion that had made it seem nothing but a copse of trees. That illusion was gone now, as was the bulk of the growth, pruned and browsed by deer, elk, and beaver until the stone wall was clearly visible.

In the moonspans that had passed since the Spell Wielders had fallen, another change had taken place in the area immediately around the stronghold. The blood briar that had made the region deadly to any unsuspecting travelers had been destroyed, herbivores proving themselves as adept at systematic hunting and killing as ever their carnivorous kin might be.

When the wolves rounded the corner of the large building, they saw what their ears had already told them. Doc and Elise were awake and about. They had taken their more rambunctious charges out into the rear yard of the house. While Elise nursed baby Elexa, Doc was working on some medical preparations over the newly rehabilitated stove of what had once been the stronghold’s outdoor kitchen.

Neither of them were paying the least attention to the seemingly numberless swarm of small children who were darting here and there, happily absorbed in some noisy game. This was not, however, because they were indifferent to their responsibility. Rather it was because the children were being very well taken care of by an assortment of yarimaimalom nursemaids.

These mostly consisted of wolves, but also included a pair of does, and a mixture of noisy birds. The birds had assigned themselves the task of keeping the children away from the small pond and Doc’s work area. The quadrupeds handled the rest.

Viewing the gathering of wild creatures and human young, Firekeeper felt a strange tugging on her heart. This was something like what her own childhood might have been, had her human parents survived and made truce with the Royal Beasts. From what she had been told, they had been on the way toward that accord, which was the reason that the wolves had cared for Firekeeper herself when the small settlement had been destroyed by a chance fire.

There were puppies in the mix as well as grown wolves, and it was hard to tell who was having more fun as they ran shrieking from each other in mad, tearing circles, always herded back from harm by the patiently watchful adults.

Elise, lifting Elexa to pat her against her shoulder, was the first to see the newcomers. She greeted them with a welcoming smile, but did not rise.

“So you’re back,” she said, “and ready to cross again? I think Enigma is waiting.”

Doc turned. “He probably is, although you may need to call for him. I think he finds the noise the children make a bit intense. Last I saw him, he was on one of the roofs.”

“Probably sunning,” Firekeeper said. “Is cat.”

“True enough,” Elise said. “Ah, that’s good …”

This last was addressed to baby Elexa, who had spit milk up all over the cloth Elise had spread over her shoulder. Firekeeper, who had done a little watching of human children, but never of an infant this small, found the entire procedure mystifying.

Was this some sort of offering from baby to mother? Wolves regurgitated their food, but that was at the pup’s demand. Indeed, the impulse was so strong that the sound alone could trigger the reflex.

“Firekeeper,” Doc called, “can you wait? I’m almost done with this batch of ointment, and you can take it with you.”

“Is any news from other side that we is needed now?” Firekeeper asked.

“Not yet,” Elise said. “But would they be able to get news out? I understand there is some fear that the gates themselves will be used for the invasion.”

“Used,” Firekeeper said, “maybe, but gates to New World is separate from those through Old World. Downhill a little, to one side. Should be safe, at least at first.”

“And we have plans in place,” Doc said, turning back to his pot and stirring a few more times before starting to pour the thick oily mass into a ceramic pot, “in case the wrong people come through. My understanding is that the invalids only agreed to be evacuated after they were given the assignment of watching the gate from this side. Their general is a young mother with a baby only a few moonspans old. She also wouldn’t leave the Nexus Islands until she was given a way to be useful.”

“Is what I hear, too,” Firekeeper said. “Those Nexans is brave to a one.”

Or frightened, she thought. After all, they know better than Blind Seer and I do what will happen if the Once Dead rise to rulership again. Perhaps they are not brave, but have instead found something they fear more than death.

WHEN THE WORD came that soldiers from the fleet were at last preparing to land on the Nexus Islands, Tiniel ran to his station on the gateway hilltop.

Although the inhabitants of the Nexus Islands tended to refer to it as “the” gateway hilltop, in reality there were a series of hills that crested in the middle of the rocky main island. The wedge-shaped buildings that held the gates had been constructed on these hilltops where they would be safe from all but the most violent storms.

Tiniel did not doubt that the Old Country sorcerers who had constructed the facility had possessed spells that moderated the weather in the vicinity of the Nexus Islands. After all, they would not have wanted all their difficult and expensive labor to have been swept away by a passing storm. Perhaps they had redirected the most violent of the weather elsewhere, and those storms were what had given rise to tales of monsters lurking beneath the ocean waters.

To Tiniel’s way of thinking, that made more sense than that actual presence of monsters in the ocean waters. What ship captain would want to admit he feared a little bad weather? Monsters, however, especially in a world where things like griffins and dragons soaring in the skies were no more worthy of comment than would be cattle grazing in a field, monsters would be worthy of fear, and the sailors would be thought wise rather than cowardly for choosing to avoid them.

The wedge-shaped buildings that held the gates were arranged in clusters, rather like slices of pie from which the tips had been cut. From a distance, the clusters looked like solid, round buildings, since the areas between were roofed and the open areas between them usually continued the rounded line of the whole with a wall of some sort. These walls were rarely much higher than waist-high on Tiniel himself, although a few carried all the way to the roof, and a few were only knee height.

Although the roofing spoke of a certain amount of respect for the inclement weather, the walls suggested that those who had first used the gates, back before the coming of querinalo, might have given some thought to securing the gate complexes in case of emergency. Tiniel had looked at the records from the days before querinalo, and had noted that the first built of the gate complexes were the most likely to possess interstitial walls. Those that had come later were less likely to have them.

Like their worries eased over time,
Tiniel thought,
or maybe they just got lazy.

Tiniel’s post was near the section of gates that came from a scattering of lands that included among them u-Chival. Only one of these gates, the one to the capital city, had been reactivated, and this not until following King Veztressidan’s initial attempts at conquest. When various of those who opposed King Veztressidan had contacted their allies, the u-Chivalum had somehow managed to open one of their own abandoned gates, and had given Veztressidan a taste of his own tactics turned against him.

U-Chival was apparently the original homeland from which the Liglimom colonists had come. One of the reasons Tiniel had been given this station was that a form of the same language was still spoken there, and that those from the Old and New World could understand each other without much difficulty.

If any came through the gate they would find themselves in a cage built from heavy iron bars. Tiniel’s orders were to keep back out of range of any weapons, warn the invaders that they should retreat immediately, before they found themselves unable to do so. If the invaders refused. then Tiniel was to call for assistance.

Skea had stationed a few groups of his soldiers up on the gateway hill against the possibility that would-be invaders would need more than verbal convincing. Verul, whose injured leg would not inconvenience him as greatly on this more limited field, was in command.

However, Tiniel had his own plans for what he would do if someone came through the gate from u-Chival, and it did not involve calling Verul, nor any of his troops, nor doing anything that would attract the attention of the winged folk who were serving as the defenders’ messengers.

Although Tiniel’s post was a solitary one, that was not the case for all of those who watched the gates. Much more attention was being given to the circle of gateways that originated in the continent of Pelland. King Veztressidan had been from Pelland. Reasonably, he had made his greatest efforts at conquest on his home continent. Therefore, the largest number of active gates were in that one complex.

That was where Derian was, armed with a sword and armored in something that covered his back and front. He wasn’t wearing the helmet he’d been issued, but he’d tried it on earlier. Tiniel had noticed that someone had taken the time to ornament it with a bristling crest of what looked remarkably like Derian’s own coarse red hair. No one had taken that much care with Tiniel’s gear. The heavy leather fit well enough, but the helmet had a tendency to slide down and cover his eyes. He’d been experimenting with various ways to pad it the evening before, and thought he’d worked something out.

Tiniel didn’t mind the relative solitude of his post. It proved to him that he had fooled the others into believing that he supported the defense of the Nexus Islands. He had certainly done everything he could to earn that trust: rising at dawn to drill, taking his watches as assigned, spending his spare time either in the archives helping Urgana (and gathering information he hoped would further his own goals), or in the kitchens peeling vegetables, carrying slop buckets, and humbly performing the most menial of menial labor.

Isende had openly rejoiced at her brother’s choice to come out of his shell. If Tiniel had needed any proof that the bond between them was well and truly broken, her joy was that proof. Had Isende still been linked to him, there would have been no way Tiniel could have hidden the sliver of hatred and resentment that festered in his heart.

But no, Isende had sacrificed her brother and her closeness to him in favor of preserving instead a spellcasting ability that should have revolted her. Even now she was down on the lower slopes with Ynamynet, Kalyndra, Enigma, and Blind Seer. The word was that those five were going to attempt some magic that would keep the invaders from the fleet from making landfall.

The invader’s white-sailed vessels hemmed the Nexus Islands in now, framing the rocky archipelago so entirely that Tiniel felt a trace claustrophobic. The ships were keeping well offshore. Channel markers had been removed, as had those that alerted sailors to rocks below the surface, but even Tiniel, who had never even glimpsed the ocean before his arrival at the Nexus, would have taken care not to get too close to those jagged, rocky shores.

“They’ll need to come ashore in boats,” said a familiar voice from behind Tiniel.

The young man spun and found Plik standing a short distance away, leaning against one of the walls and, like Tiniel himself, inspecting the fleet.

“Plik! I thought you were coordinating something with the yarimaimalom. What are you doing here?”

Tiniel tried to sound conversational, but he hoped Plik couldn’t hear the hammering of his heart. Isende might have been fooled by Tiniel’s apparent cooperation, but Tiniel had wondered from time to time if Plik had been as completely convinced. After all, the two of them had continued as neighbors in the pair of cottages. Plik had more opportunity than most to observe Tiniel when Tiniel might be unaware, and Tiniel had talked with Plik enough to know that while Plik might appear cute and cuddly, he was a wise old creature.

Moreover, the maimalodalum possessed a sense of smell as good as the raccoon he so much resembled. After hearing Firekeeper give a report in which information deduced from scent had appeared as essential as that which had been garnered from the more usual senses, Tiniel had worried that some element in his odor might give him away. He had taken to rubbing a scented ointment onto his body, claiming that the sea air was drying his skin. He didn’t know if anyone even noticed his explanation, but he felt fairly certain that he would give himself away by something as normal as sweating.

“I’m looking at the fleet,” Plik replied. “I am indeed translating the reports the winged folk are bringing. That’s how I’m so certain landing boats are being readied for use.”

“Ah,” Tiniel said. “Sorry. I guess I’m jumpy.”

“For good reason,” Plik said. “I would guess this is your first battle. Gak seemed a very settled place, at least when I passed through there.”

“It is,” Tiniel said, and felt relieved to realize that even if Plik noticed anything odd about his behavior, he would pass it off to nerves.

Plik probably walked up here to see me because he had thought I’d need some comfort. Well, I guess I would, if I thought I’d be on the losing side. I’m going to have to do what I can to try and keep him safe. They’ll owe me a few favors.

An osprey, doubtless coming in from a scouting run, landed in one of the wind-twisted evergreens that grew wherever they could find foothold on the slopes of the gateway hillside.