Wolves of the Beyond: Shadow Wolf (9 page)

BRANGWEN WATCHED HIS MATE,
Morag, walk out stiff-legged from the large cave they shared with their three yearlings in the westernmost part of the MacDonegal territory. They belonged to the Pack of the Dancing Giants, named for the dozen or more large stone formations that stood upright on the high plain near where they had their dens. Morag had gone out to chase after Brecco, the middle pup of her three-some, who had brought a bleeding hare into the cave. This was against all the rules. It was good that Brecco had become a proficient hunter, but his manners were deplorable. Did he want to invite a larger, fiercer animal right into their den?

Brangwen’s first instinct was to chase after Brecco himself and give him a good cuff on the ears. But Morag
had quickly jumped up and said, “No, I’ll go.” He knew he had to let her try. Ever since she had stumbled during the musk ox
byrrgis
, she had been out of sorts. She must be scared of falling, for she moved slowly, tentatively, like a very old wolf. This litter was probably her last, but many she-wolves, especially outflankers like Morag, still had a lot of chase left in them.

Brangwen winced now as he saw Morag bump into one of the immense upright stones. Brecco looked back at his mum and saw what had happened. The look of shock in the yearling’s eyes was like a stab to Brangwen’s marrow.

I must not rush out. I must let her do this herself.
He watched Brecco approach his mother. Brecco’s ears were laid back, his tail tucked so tightly between his legs that Brangwen thought he looked like that loathsome yellow gnaw wolf from the MacDuncan River Pack. Morag snarled and commenced scolding the yearling. She cuffed him, but Brangwen could tell that her marrow wasn’t in it. Brecco stood there for several seconds as if demanding that she cuff him again, harder. But Morag turned away and walked back to the cave.

When she entered, she said nothing but circled twice and settled on the pelt of a caribou. Her eyes were half
closed. Brangwen could only see thin slits of green, and he realized the green was not as bright as before. There seemed to be a film over it. He settled himself on another pelt close by.

The sun at this time of year flooded directly into the cave until it sank below the horizon. As the pale violet shadows of twilight seeped into the cave, Brangwen thought his mate had fallen asleep. But she had not. She had been thinking of how to handle the twilight that was slowly creeping through her and what she must tell Brangwen.

It had begun long before the stumble in the
byrrgis
. It had begun when the pups were still in the whelping den and she had set out to find a new den for them. She had ranged farther than she had intended, and before she knew it, she was out of the MacDonegal territory and crossing the big river. But it had felt so good to roam after being penned up with those rambunctious pups.

It was shortly after she had crossed the river that she found the skull of a grizzly bear, and seconds later, a scent came to her, dim but immediately recognizable as that of the beautiful silver pup with the stars in his fur.

That was when the darkness began. It didn’t seem possible that memory should dim her vision. And to
complicate matters, she had never told Brangwen about her life in the MacDuncan clan. She had not wanted to lie, but the forgetting had truly worked back then. She had no memory of that pup or his siblings when she met her new mate.

It had worked
. The words kept running through her mind.
Worked
. She had rehearsed so many ways how to tell her mate, but now she simply began.

“Brangwen,” she said quietly. He started, for he had thought her asleep. “The forgetting has stopped.”

“What? What are you talking about? Forgetting what?”

She should have realized that males did not really know about this in the way females did, even if they had been the fathers of
malcadhs
. She closed her eyes tightly. It seemed that now she could sometimes see better with her eyes shut. “Brangwen, you must believe I am no double-tongued wolf. I would never lie to you.”

“Of course not. How could you ever think such a thing, Morag?”

And so she told him about what had happened to her before they met, when she had given birth to the silver-coated
malcadh
.

“A
malcadh
,” he whispered with disbelief. “And our pups so healthy.”

“Because we make good pups, you and I together,” she said softly.

“We certainly do.” He came over, and began licking his mate’s face. He could taste the oily tears that leaked from her eyes.

“I would have told you, but, you see, the forgetting works. It worked so well until, until—”

“Until you found the scent of your son, the silver one.”

Morag looked at Brangwen through her filmy eyes. He didn’t call the pup a
malcadh
. Not an
it
, but a
son
. “Oh, Brangwen, you called him my son.”

“Of course. I might not be a female. I cannot claim ever to have birthed a pup, let alone one taken by an Obea to a
tummfraw
. But I can feel things.” He paused. “And I know that this silver pup you never named burns like a bright little star inside you.”

“How can you feel all this?” she said in a trembling voice.

“We are paw fast, are we not?”

“That we are!” Morag replied vigorously.

“We made our paw-fast vows—was it two autumns ago during the Caribou Moon?”

“No, the Red Leaf Moon. I remember.” And then, in just a whisper, “I remember too much.”

“We must talk now,” Brangwen said with his head nuzzled close to the ear he had just been licking. “You must tell me about your eyes. What is happening?”

“The darkness that was in my womb where the silver pup grew has come back and spread to my eyes.”

“And so you only see blackness. Is it like night always?”

“No, it is more like sinking into a haze. But I am sinking fast.” She paused. “I have had time to think about this, Brangwen. I must go to the Sark of the Slough.”

She could feel his hackles rise. Males were always more frightened of the Sark of the Slough than females. Her powers disturbed them. Morag had not gone to the Sark after her own loss. Perhaps she should have, she thought now. The Sark was said to have potions that helped with the forgetting, and tonics that healed the womb so it would be ready and eager for a new litter. But now she must go to the Sark to lift the haze.

“I shall go with you,” Brangwen said firmly.

“You are not afraid of the Sark?” Morag asked.

“I am more afraid of you stumbling or becoming lost.”

“But scents come to me more quickly now. More sharply than ever.”

“You cannot smell a hole and you cannot smell your way to the Sark,” Brangwen said.

“Yes, I suppose you are right. What about the yearlings? Who shall take care of them?”

“Their auntie Daraigh, of course,” Brangwen answered.

“She’s so strict.”

He was about to say,
Not as strict as you used to be
. But he held his tongue.

And so it was decided. They would leave at dawn for the Slough and the camp of the Sark.

AT THE SAME DAWN HOUR THAT
Morag and her mate set out for the Sark of the Slough, Gwynneth lifted off from a ledge at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. Her harvest of bonk coals had been excellent. She had stayed through a full moon. But she was obsessed by the terrible scene she had witnessed on the ridge. The sounds of that
malcadh
’s terrified screams and the image of that torn little body haunted Gwynneth. It seemed like a scene from the darkest realms of hagsmire. Had Hamish, the old Fengo of the Watch, been there, she would have discussed it with him. But there was a new Fengo now, a wolf named Finbar, and she did not feel as close to him.

I suppose,
Gwynneth thought,
I could visit the Sark of the Slough
. Gwynneth was an owl—an owl with bonk coals. The Sark loved coals. Both Gwynneth and her
father before her father had traded with the Sark. Some said she got along better with owls than she did with her own kind.

The Sark was just removing pots from her kiln when Gwynneth landed. “I have some very good bonk coals for you, ma’am.” Owls called the Sark ma’am when addressing her. She seemed to like it. If she hadn’t, she would certainly have let them know.

“Any lesser-grade ones?”

“Lesser grades. Why would you want them?”

The Sark turned her head and looked slyly at Gwynneth. “I know conventional wisdom, at least from a collier’s or Rogue smith’s point of view, is that hotter is better. But you, my dear Gwynneth, deal in metals. I deal in earth, clay, glazes—glazes made from crushed bones, sand, borax, and any mineral I can pull from the river and grind down. But the real secret is not the recipe for the glaze but to fire it at just the right temperature. And to get the right temperature, guess what the secret ingredient is?”

“What?”

“Scat.”

“Scat?”

“You call it poop.”

“You mean like white splatters, wet poopers?” Gwynneth was shocked. Owls were proud of their neat system of digestion; indeed some felt compelled to call it a noble process.

“Sometimes, but those white splatters—the seagulls especially—are too far away for me.” The Sark bent down and kicked a pile of dried moose poop toward Gwynneth.

“Eeew!”

“Don’t eeew me. Owls can’t smell worth scat—pardon the pun!” The Sark began to mold moose scat into little rounds. “These little moose patties burn steady, burn slow. I can get the most gorgeous glazes you’ve ever seen.” She paused and looked up. The skittering eye was bouncing around as if it had a life of its own, but the other eye was steady as the Sark took in Gwynneth’s expression. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look sick, sick like…no, not the yarpie barpies. Isn’t that what you call it when your pellets go soft on you?” The Sark didn’t wait for an answer but regarded the Masked Owl with a renewed intensity.

Great Glaux,
Gwynneth thought,
how could she tell
? This really was a wolf wise in the way few were. Not that the other wolves were dumb, but the Sark was like one of the healers at the great tree, to whom owls came when they were seriously ill. Well, there was no use trying to hide anything. Gwynneth had to talk to the Sark about what she had found on the ridge. It would be a relief. A pellet seemed to fly up from her gizzard.

“Oh, pardon me, ma’am. I didn’t mean to yarp right here!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” replied the Sark. She picked up the pellet in her mouth and plopped it on top of the moose patty. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind what?”

“Me using your pellet. I have a hunch this combination could be—how should I put it?—quite dynamic in the kiln. You don’t know how long I have been trying to get a turquoise matte glaze.”

Gwynneth had no idea what the Sark was talking about. But there was one thing that both Gwynneth and the Sark had in common: They were both artists. “Sure, help yourself,” she said.

After the Sark had put the moose patty and the pellet in the kiln, she turned back to Gwynneth. “Well, now
that you’ve yarped your pellet and are looking a tad better, come on inside and tell me what’s on your mind.”

Gwynneth took a deep breath.

“I’m here about—a
malcadh
.”

“You don’t say…” The Sark turned around from fluffing a pelt she had dragged nearer to the fire for Gwynneth. The skittish eye grew still. “Why would an owl be interested in a
malcadh
, except of course for the obvious?”

Gwynneth’s feathers puffed up with indignation at this last remark. “Because a wolf was interested in that
malcadh
before any owl, fox, cougar, or moose,” she snapped.

The hackles of the Sark’s fur rose up in a small cyclonic flurry. “What are you saying? The mother came back?”

“No, not the mother. And the pup was not prey for any other animals. It was not eaten.”

“Are you saying that…” The Sark gasped and seemed unable to go on.

“Yes. The
malcadh
was murdered.”

The Sark’s skittish eye went into a spinning frenzy, and her legs began to wobble. “You can’t be serious!” But even as she spoke, she knew that this Masked Owl was telling the truth. For a
malcadh
’s life to end this way—it was not a natural death.

“I have never in all my long years…” The Sark’s breath came fast and she eased herself onto the heap of rabbit pelts. “All right, tell me what you saw, what you heard.” She knew well the extraordinary information that owls could gather through their ear slits. “Tell me everything.”

And so Gwynneth did. The fire had begun to gutter out when the Sark finally got up to get some more kindling.

“Are you sure you don’t want a bonk coal?” Gwynneth offered, simply to break the long silence with which the Sark had greeted her story.

“No,” the Sark growled. “Why waste a good bonk coal on a hearth fire? I have fur, remember. I don’t need such a hot fire in my cave.”

After tending the fire, she settled down again. “This is very bad, very bad indeed. And you have no idea who this wolf might be?”

“None. That’s why I’m here. I thought you might know.”

“The only wolf, or kind of wolf, I can imagine doing this might be a foaming-mouth one. You didn’t pick up any scent? Oh, I forgot. You can’t smell.”

“Right. But it might have been an outclanner from the Outermost.”

“The clans would have known about it. There is an alert system.” The Sark buried her muzzle between her paws.
Why? Why would a wolf do such a thing?
The Sark remained still for several minutes. Finally, she pulled her muzzle out from her paws and said, “So you are the only one who knows about this heinous crime?”

“Well, I suppose so. I mean, I flew off. Someone else could have come along and found…found”—Gwynneth stumbled—“the remains, but they wouldn’t know it was a wolf who murdered the
malcadh
. As I told you, I was flying overhead when it happened. I picked up the panting of a wolf, the gnashing of its teeth.”

“Huh! So our teeth make that distinctive a sound, do they?”

“Well, for our ears, yes. First of all, as you know, we owls don’t have teeth. It’s all talons and beaks with us. Fox teeth are much tinier than wolf teeth, and make a scraping sound. Cougars’ teeth are huge. They make loud, cracking noises.”

“And what about wolf teeth?”

“It’s your back teeth that have a unique sound. They slice, sharply. It’s not really all that loud—just a clean slicing sound as if two blades are swiping against each other.”

The Sark opened her mouth wide and revealed the formidable scissorlike teeth in the back near her throat.

“Yes, quite impressive,” Gwynneth said, and averted her eyes with a sudden twist of her head.

The Sark closed her mouth. “So we can safely assume that no other creature except for us knows about this terrible murder.”

Gwynneth nodded.

“I think, then, we must keep it that way. I’m going to have to think about this for a while. Describe to me the exact site. Maybe I can go there and pick up a scent.”

When Gwynneth finished pinpointing the location on a map she had scratched in the cave floor, the Sark felt there was one scent they would pick up. That of Faolan. For the place was exactly where he had described finding the
malcadh
pup whose mother had recovered in the Sark’s cave.

“Faolan was at that ridge,” the Sark said casually.

“Surely you’re not suggesting Faolan could have done this!” Gwynneth was shocked.

“Oh, no, never. He saw the pup, however. At least a day and a night before you saw it on your flight to the Sacred Ring. But he was in a complete dither when he came here. You can imagine what it was like for a
malcadh
to see another laid out on a
tummfraw
, knowing that he had gone through the same thing. Went straight to his marrow.”

“Yes, of course,” Gwynneth said, her voice trembling slightly. She sighed. “If you could fly and I could smell, what a team we’d make!”

The Sark blinked several times. She felt her skittish eye still for a moment. “But we can!” she said suddenly.

“Can what? You can’t fly. I have no sense of smell. You told me so yourself.”

“But don’t you see that together we have it all? We might be able to solve this monstrous crime. We are more than the sum of our parts!”

So together the wolf and the owl started to devise a plan in which they would both go to the
tummfraw
on the ridge. They would uncover what clues they could—bones, perhaps tufts of fur that had stuck in small crevices.

“You see, there is—how should I explain it?—a map of scents surrounding everything. You just have to know how to sort them out.” The Sark spoke excitedly. Her eye was whirling now. “So I pick up the scent and then try and figure out the direction it came from.”

“A vector—a scent vector!” Gwynneth replied. Owls were extraordinary navigators. So they often spoke in terms of navigation when they took bearings on stars or scanned for sound sources.

“Exactly! You see what I mean. We are more than the sum of our parts!”

And at just that moment, the old wolf’s nostrils began to twitch. The wind had shifted and on it a vaguely familiar scent wafted into her cave. Indeed, an alarming scent.

“Owl!” she rasped. “You have to go. Visitors are coming and it’s best I be alone. Come back two nights from now.”

Gwynneth knew better than to argue. She left at once.