Wolf's Blood (81 page)

“And I,” the Meddler said, “am commonly called the Meddler, although I sincerely believe that ‘a meddler’ is a more honest title. Certainly, there are others here who meddle.”

He looked pointedly at Firekeeper as he said so, but she pretended to be absorbed in gently squeezing a single drop of Grateful Peace’s blood onto a thin piece of glass her wallet held for just this purpose.

The Meddler continued, “I suppose I should also admit to a rather odd cohabitation with a spellcaster called Virim, and even with the faintest ghost of a mountain sheep whose name—if it ever possessed any—is long forgotten.”

He extended his right hand and Grateful Peace brought his own to meet it. For a long moment, the two men stood that way, gazes locked in fierce assessment. Then the Meddler held his left hand out to Firekeeper.

“The blood?”

Firekeeper held out the piece of glass, and the Meddler squashed his fingertip into it. The shining red droplet hissed and turned into smoke.

“Interesting,” the Meddler said. “You have no magic of your own, but there is a thread of another’s power present. I do not think that querinalo could use it to get a grip on you, but it might travel the reverse of that road and find your … partner? Associate?”

“The dragon is what the dragon wishes to be,” Grateful Peace said evenly. “But I will not bring harm to it. Can you protect it?”

“I can set a shield of sorts along that thread,” the Meddler said. “But do you wish to protect this dragon? From what I can see, it does you no good.”

“I made a pact,” Grateful Peace said. “I will not violate what I promised, even by a technicality none of us could have envisioned at the time.”

Firekeeper could not tell if the Meddler was impressed, but she knew she was. The Dragon of Despair had been a frightening creature, and the price it had exacted for its surrender had been brutal. She studied the Meddler. He was standing perfectly still, his eyes squeezed shut, the hand that was not interlocked with Peace’s own making strange little gestures, moving to a music she could not hear.

After what seemed like a very long time, but she knew had not been long at all, the Meddler let Peace’s hand free.

“Next?” he said. almost merrily.

The next two tests went more quickly, for neither Citrine nor Edlin proved to have any magical ability. Melina’s long-ago use of Citrine had left scars the Meddler detected, but he assured them that she was in no more danger than “a pot was in danger of being mistaken for the soup cooked in it.”

Citrine looked insulted by this assessment. Edlin was frankly relieved.

“Don’t know what I would have done if I found out I had a talent, what? Heard what happened to Derian, though. Poor chap. Hear he’s taking it hard.”

“He is,” Firekeeper said, “and you will not make worse. Nexans think very highly of Derian, even if he do look like a horse, and I always think highly of Derian, no matter what he look like.”

Edlin grinned at her, then turned to retrieve various bundles from where they had been stowed in the shadowed spaces outside the bright circle of the lantern light.

“I wouldn’t harm Derian for all the world, don’t you know. He’s a fine man, what? My father’s always wishing I had a trace of Derian’s stability of character.”

Citrine had also retrieved a bundle of gear, and now she looked at Firekeeper with a trace of indecision.

“Do we need to give a lot more blood for the gate?”

“Not much,” Firekeeper reassured her. “We need to go through two by two. First, I think, you and Blind Seer, then Grateful Peace and Edlin. I will come with the Meddler, and then Enigma will follow last.”

They did this, and the passage went smoothly. However, as soon as they left the wedge-shaped building that housed the New Kelvinese gate, Firekeeper could scent a tightness to the air. Before she could howl a question, the raven Lovable glided down and perched on one of the nearby pylons.

“What is going on?”
Firekeeper asked her.
“Has there been another attack?”

“The gates are coming alive,”
Lovable said with none of her usual chattiness
. “All in the Pelland structure, so far. So far we have held, but Bitter says that we are being tested, as rash younglings will challenge the falcon.”

Firekeeper looked over her shoulder. The three new arrivals were looking from side to side, absorbing the miracle that they really had moved in a few steps from the cool, shadowed tunnels beneath Thendulla Lypella to the open air of a hilltop on the Nexus Islands. She wished she had time to give them a proper tour, but time was only one of the many resources that the Nexans lacked.

“Tell Derian,”
she said to Lovable
, “that we are here safely. I am going to take Grateful Peace to where he can see the waters, and learn what he can about sea monsters. Someone should tell Ynamynet, too.”

“I can manage that,”
Blind Seer said
. “For this battle, I am of her little pack, and she should know I am ready for the fight. Enigma is already gone.”

Firekeeper hated relinquishing the familiar security of having Blind Seer beside her, but she knew he was right. If they had been hunting elk or moose, he would have gone from her to drive the game. She would have found herself a place where she could best use her bow.

“Good hunting, then”
was all she said as she knelt to embrace him.

“And to you,”
he replied; then he was gone, a grey streak vanished down the hillside.

Lovable had already flapped away, and so Firekeeper turned to her three humans and one Meddler—despite his current form, she was not in the least certain whether she considered him human.

“Lovable, that raven, telled me that the other gates is coming active, but none have breaked through. Word goes to Derian and Ynamynet, but unless they cry other, I take you to where the water is so Peace can see if he can find these monsters.”

Grateful Peace and Citrine nodded, but neither spoke. Firekeeper suspected they were both were still trying to accept their new surroundings. Edlin, however, beamed cheerfully and settled his bow on his shoulder.

“Righty-o,” he said happily. “I say, do you think there will be a bush or someplace where I can change my clothes? I grabbed my fighting gear when I went by the embassy, but didn’t take time to change.”

“Bushes there is,” Firekeeper assured him as she led the way down the hillside toward the shore. “Is good you have armor. Soon, I think, even if we all do our best, you will need it.”

TINIEL WATCHED FROM his post as Firekeeper led the strangers from New Kelvin out of the gate complex containing the New World gates.

Compared to the attire worn by the Spell Wielders, the long, elaborately embroidered robes worn by the white-haired man who must be Grateful Peace were nothing unusual. The strange way he wore his hair, shaven across the front on his head, and the elaborate tattoos that ornamented the pale skin of his face were rather more startling.

Tiniel almost wished he could leave his post and get a closer look at them, but that would never do. Faithful unto death, that was he. Or at least that was what the others must think him to be.

His gate had experienced the same flickering of activity now being reported with increasing regularity at the Pelland complex. However, the stone surface had remained cold and dark for long enough now that he wondered if he had chosen the wrong post. He had finagled for the one leading to u-Chival because, since there were only one or two gates active there, the commanders of the defense had decided that it could be watched over by one human, as long as that human had the means to summon help when needed.

In Tiniel’s case, that help took the form of a young, rather excitable merlin who had been hatched during the captivity of the yarimaimalom on the Nexus Islands. In appearance, Farborn resembled a miniature version of the much more impressive peregrine, Elation. Tiniel found himself wondering if they had been assigned together as a subtle insult.

The great commander accompanied by a falcon who was willing to risk querinalo to come to his side. Then there’s me with the squirt. If I knew for sure they were making fun of me … But this isn’t the time to draw attention to myself.

Farborn was as eager to prove himself as Tiniel was. Familiar with the merlin’s motivations, Tiniel had found it astonishingly easy to prompt the diminutive falcon to take up his post outside the buildings housing the active gates.

“That way you’ll see if trouble is coming our way,” Tiniel said. “and can shriek the alert. If I see anything happening in the buildings, I’ll call you, and you’ll be that much closer to the Pelland gate so you can relay our warning to central command.”

Farborn had agreed—not in words, of course. Tiniel could no more understand the speech of the yarimaimalom now than he could before. However, the fierce little merlin had bobbed in the fashion that was rapidly becoming bird talk for “yes,” and had flown off to his current post.

He now sat on one of the taller stone pillars, scanning the area importantly, looking, to Tiniel’s way of thinking, like a little boy dressed up to play soldier. Although one of the more senior winged folk periodically passed over the area, none of them challenged Farborn’s territory, and so Tiniel thought he had done a fair job of securing himself from observation.

Tiniel thought that it was distinctly ironic that his status as a resident of the New World had automatically accorded him a greater degree of trust. The thinking that had granted this trust was that because Tiniel had no ties to the Old World, he would not be tempted to ally himself with any of those who came from there. That way of thinking certainly applied to Derian, Harjeedian, Plik, and even to Isende, but it certainly didn’t apply to Tiniel himself. For his part, he was sick of both the New Worlders and the Nexans alike. His only hope for the honor and prestige and redemption he craved was with the Old World.

Now he watched with something like loathing as Firekeeper escorted the three who had arrived from New Kelvin down toward the island’s main harbor. Earlier Isende had dropped by and happily told him that Derian had told her that this Grateful Peace fellow was supposed to be something called a Dragon Speaker. and that everyone hoped that he would be able to do something about the invasion by sea.

Another person with powers,
Tiniel thought.
Everywhere I look, there are people just dripping with power. I wonder how Virim feels, learning what a lousy job he did getting rid of magic? Wait. This might be the best thing for me. An invasion by sea wouldn’t do me much good. I need to have it come through the gates.

He watched the receding figures with a new anxiousness, then turned back to the buildings containing “his” gates. They remained cold and dark.

What if I gambled wrong? I’ve gambled wrong my whole life. l failed with the senate in Gak. l failed trying to reestablish my family’s stronghold. I failed miserably at the moment I thought we were finally successful—back when we opened the gates to this horrid place. I failed against querinalo. Everything I do is a failure. I can’t fail this time. I can’t!

He pressed his head against the iron bars that caged the gate, staring imploringly at the cold stone wall.

Hurry!
he pleaded silently.
I can’t bear to be a failure again.

THE AREA SURROUNDING the gate building in Bryessidan’s capital was alive with the orderly confusion of soldiers preparing to march to battle.

Since the final planning meeting, time had alternately raced and dragged, but at last, unequivocally, the second day of Bear Moon had arrived, and the small but impeccably trained army of the Kingdom of the Mires was prepared to invade the Nexus Islands.

Only two uncertainties remained. Could they get through the gate? When they did, would they find the battle already over, the land already secured by the navy commanded by King Hurwin?

That night, safe in the quiet darkness of their shared bedchamber, Bryessidan had confided these two apprehensions to Gidji. She had laughed softly and snuggled next to his side. The way she rested her head on his shoulder was all loving wife, but her answer showed her mettle as a queen.

“You’ll get through, Bryessidan,” she said. “Maybe not on the first attempt, but certainly by the second or third. Don’t despair. As for my father and his navy, we know they haven’t won the battle already. If they had, they would have sent word through the gates. They didn’t take a huge force of spellcasters with them, but they had enough that if the Nexus Islands had fallen, we would know before any but the Nexans themselves.”

Her words had encouraged Bryessidan, but the hours of darkness stretched interminably, and every time he heard a sentry call or some other sound of activity, he wondered whether someone was coming to tell him that his labors had been for nothing. He had no idea when his listening passed into dreams and back again to wakefulness, but when morning finally released him to rise without seeming overly anxious, Bryessidan knew he must have slept at least some. Only in dreams could any world be as strange as the one he had experienced during that long vigil.

As he bathed and donned his armor, the king of the Mires reviewed the last minute reports brought to him by his various advisors. Essentially, they boiled down to one thing: No change. All is ready.

“At least here,” Bryessidan added as he set the last one aside. “We can have no idea what our allies have done in the past several moonspans. If they were having difficulties, the written reports they have sent would not confess the truth lest they seem reluctant.”

“And some places, like u-Chival,” Gidji said, speaking as if reading his mind, “have not been able to report with any regularity. Still, the auguries show that my father and his navy have not suffered any undue disaster. I believe that you and King Hurwin alone could secure the Nexus Islands, so waste no thought on the actions of your allies.”