Firekeeper Saga - Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart Part 18

The musician moved his lament into autumn, when the abandoned lover couldn't see the beauty in the colors of the trees or smell the rich scents of the harvest. Only beer gave him some comfort but left him:

Wish'n I was dead, with a pain in my heart and an ache in my head.

By winter the musician was warming to his theme, growing more pa.s.sionate as he crooned about the beauty of ice and the softness of snow, the embrace of sleet and the glitter of cold.

Derian tossed a couple of tokens into the musician's cup and turned away before the song could pa.s.s through spring and return to summer. He didn't want to know if the unknown subject found redemption or some chillier and more permanent peace.As he continued his way to the Market Square, Derian hummed the infectious lament to himself.

You can't call it a tune really or even a melody, but it's music nonetheless, he was thinking when a voice called out his name.

"Derian!"

The voice was female, robust, and terribly familiar. Derian looked up from his contemplation of his boot toes and saw a rounded figure swathed in cloak and shawl, a basket over her arm, waving to him from across the Square. There was no market today, so nothing impeded his getting a clear look at her: Heather the baker's daughter, the girl he had been walking with before he'd been hired by Earl Kestrel.

"Heather," he said, bending to bestow a chaste kiss on the round, red cheek she held up for his salute.

"How are you?"

She smiled up at him, her bright smile tinged with something wicked.

"Well enough, Merry Deri." Her smile became arch. "I'm betrothed now, or will be as good as, by the end of next moon-span."

Derian recalled that like him Heather had been a cold-weather baby. She'd be nineteen next month and old enough for a completely respectable betrothal. The fact that they both were on the verge of legal adulthood had added a certain very interesting tension to their strolls-and to the occasional visits to her father's flour shed or to some infrequently used barn.

As Heather gossiped amicably about their mutual acquaintances, Derian recalled their time together.

Heather hadn't been a tease, not quite, for she'd made clear that a public promise of marriage was her price for letting him get any farther than the inside of her well-rounded blouse.

Derian might have given her that price, too, but he was a bit more experienced than Heather imagined-or she wouldn't have risked tempting him. There had been a girl or two who worked around the stables who hadn't been adverse to a roll in the hay with the boss's son. Their willingness had kept him less than desperate and so free.

"You know, Deri," Heather was saying, a change in her tone bringing him back to the present. "I liked you quite a lot. I cried myself to sleep at night for weeks when you rode off west with Earl Kestrel. Cried and cried."

"I'm sorry," he said awkwardly.

"I thought you'd get eaten by a bear or something," she continued, s.h.i.+fting her basket from arm to arm.

Derian politely took it from her. It was heavy with fresh-baked loaves, wrapped against the chill.

"Can I walk you wherever you're going?" he asked.

"I'm delivering these to the Archer Manse," she said. "I'd be glad for the company."

Elise's house, Derian thought. And I have an invitation to call.

He resolved to keep his hat pulled well down over his hair and slouched a bit, shuffling his feet against the cobbles.

"My father," Heather said, "told me that you'd come back alive, but you'd never come back to me. He was right enough.""You," Derian said indignantly, "refused to see me when I called!"

"I did," she sniffed. "I wasn't going to cheapen myself walking out with a fellow who was living with another woman-seeing her stark naked by all accounts."

Derian shrugged. That had been true enough. He hadn't really been living with Firekeeper, but he'd seen her naked often and had found it embarra.s.sing rather than stimulating.

Still, he didn't bother to defend himself. He had no desire to resume his relations.h.i.+p with Heather-or to anger her almost-betrothed. Heather wouldn't be above teasing her fellow with the threat of a rival, just to make sure that her sweetheart cared.

"Father said," Heather prattled on, "that if I waited for you it would be just like it had been for him and your mother."

"My mother!" Derian was astonished.

"Sure." Heather was delighted at having information he lacked. "Didn't you know that they were sweethearts? Daddy still says that she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. Makes Mother right annoyed at him, but it slips out from time to time, especially when he's had a cup too many."

"My mother and your father?" Derian repeated more calmly. "Really?"

"Sure, back when they were younger than we are now, seventeen, maybe," Heather said with the loftiness of her almost nineteen years. "You mother had bigger dreams than being a baker's wife, though.

She dumped Daddy when he got serious about her and eventually married Colby Carter. Guess she was right about his prospects. They've made a real business out of just a few carts."

Heather sighed. "And my father is still baking bread and so that's what my husband will do, too. I'll be baking babies in my oven and delivering loaves."

"There are worse things," Derian offered awkwardly.

Heather gave him a defiant smile, but there was something ugly beneath the grin.

"Lots worse, like being a boot-lick for the n.o.bility or a kennel keeper for a naked girl who eats raw meat. At least my husband will be his own man."

She tugged her basket from his arm and tore off down the street. Derian stared after her, too astonished to be angry or even hurt. That would come later.

Distantly, he thought he could hear the guitarist plunk-plunking away.

She left me in winter...

Morning came early this high on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Rime, for there were no mountains in the east to block the sunrise, but Firekeeper awoke even earlier than the sun. The wolves uncurled from sleep at her motion and there was no need for speech among the three.

Together they slipped into the woods and hunted, bringing down a young buck too stupid to be allowed to breed since he had stayed in the vicinity of what even Firekeeper's nose told her was an improbable and even contradictory host of scents.She used flint and steel to strike sparks for a fire, and lightly grilled a steak cut thin.

"Mother," she asked the One Female, "who taught me to cook my food?"

The One Female looked up from gnawing on a thighbone. There was a sharp crack as she broke it to expose the marrow within. Her silvery fur was all over blood, not only muzzle and throat, but chest as well.

"You have done so for as long as I have known you. Isn't such practice the human way?"

Firekeeper sensed an evasion, but didn't press. She had held her question until the wolves had reached what humans might call dessert, knowing far better than to distract a feeding wolf.

By the time the thighbone was cleaned, her own meat was broiled to her satisfaction and she kept her silence while chewing on thin slices of the hot, rare venison. It was tough, but not impossibly so, for the buck had not yet lost all of summer's fat.

By the time Firekeeper had finished eating, the sky as glimpsed through the interlaced tree branches was streaked with pink and yellow. The wolves were willing to let the crows and jays pick at what remained of the buck. In truth there was not much. Several days of dining on rabbits had given Blind Seer an appet.i.te for a solid meal.

"Wash," the One Female ordered. "The others will be waiting impatiently."

Firekeeper asked, "Mother, are we then important that they must wait on our pleasure?"

"We are," the One Female replied, "no more important, but no less, thus they can no more order us about than we can them. We do them the courtesy of joining them, they of waiting until we are fed."

"It is unwise," Blind Seer quoted unexpectedly from the store of proverbs the wolves used for teaching pups, "to talk with a hungry wolf."

Firekeeper nodded and loped beside the silver wolf and the grey to where the waters of Rimed Lake waited still and s.h.i.+ning in the dawn light. The wolves waded in directly, snapping at the thin sh.e.l.l of ice and drinking in great gulps of the chill water.

Hesitating only to strip her clothing from her, Firekeeper stacked the pieces, placing her Fang on top where she could easily reach it. Water would do no kindnesses to the tanned leather of her vest and breeches, and even the fine blade that had once belonged to Prince Barden was not immune to rust.

As she stood poised for the plunge, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a side pool that had returned to tranquility after the wolves' games.

Her hair, grown longer since she left the wilds to live among humans, was matted and poking out at odd angles-no wonder, since she had neither combed nor brushed it since leaving Revelation Point Castle, but only made certain that the longer ends remained pulled back into a queue.

She had lost weight as well, though she was far from the slat-sided waif who had first crept out of the forest to speak with Derian. The small, rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s that had developed after she had begun to eat more regularly remained, as did a certain healthy sleekness.

Nothing but great magic would alter the scars that st.i.tched her hide, nor did she particularly desire them gone. They were the price she paid for being a hairless wolf. More would she have preferred fur and fangs and four strong legs and a voice that could howl across the void to shake the moon in her dance.A buffet of icy wind across her naked body interrupted this momentary introspection. Firekeeper dove into the clear waters of the lake, cutting the surface as cleanly as did the waterfowl from whom she had learned the maneuver.

Ignoring the cold was impossible, so she accepted it without dreaming of hot baths as a human might.

Instead she grasped handfuls of black sand from the lake bottom and used them to scrub the blood and trail grime from her hide.

Despite vigorous finger combing, Firekeeper could do nothing about the knots and snarls in her hair, so after she had shaken and danced herself warm and fairly dry, she dressed, noting woefully that all her garments could use a good cleaning.

Then she used the Fang to crop her hair short once more. The blade bore a keener edge than even the razor Derian used to shave and she honed it frequently, thus managing a neater end result than ever before. She cropped the hair shortest near her face, allowing herself to retain some longer strands near the back, which she gathered into a defiant little tail with a piece of faded black ribbon.

Blind Seer lolled on the sand near her, chewing a burr from between his toes and chuckling at her efforts.

"Even a wolf may have her vanity," Firekeeper said, booting him in the ribs with one bare foot. "If this little tail becomes too much trouble, I can chop it short as fast as I could remove your obnoxious bush."

Blind Seer stopped laughing and beat his tail on the ground, hearing the threat in the words. The wolf-woman accepted his apology and knelt to kiss him on the black leather of his nose.

"Mother has gone to see if the others await," she said. "We should not make her call us to her like idiot pups who have been hunting crickets and so risk missing the meat."

Rising and shaking the sand from his still damp fur, Blind Seer said softly: "And remember, I am with you, not with anyone else, not even with the One Female. If any or all press you beyond endurance, I will guard your back."

Firekeeper buried her hand in his neck ruff for a moment in thanks, but said nothing more. Only Blind Seer knew the comfort she took in his steady, fierce support and he, in turn, was oddly comforted by that knowledge.

Despite the conflicting mixture of odors she had scented since their arrival the night before, somehow Firekeeper had expected the gathering to be largely one of birds. Doubtless this was because Bee Biter had been the messenger to bring back Elation and because of Elation's own story of how she had been questioned by the Mothers. Therefore, Firekeeper had to conceal her astonishment when she saw the group that awaited her.

There was a puma lounging with lazy, golden-furred insolence on a shelf of rock that just happened to catch the best of the morning sun. An autumn-fat brown bear leaned against the lower portions of that same rock, little eyes actively denying its physical somnolence. A red fox sat conversing with a jay.

Nor was the jay the only bird present. Elation perched on a branch beside another peregrine; a kite swept out of the sky to land on the rock just above the puma. Bee Biter claimed a sweeping oak limb all for himself. A gyrfalcon hunched her shoulders next to an apparently half-asleep owl. Like large and small versions of the same bird, a raven perched next to a crow.

But it was the buck elk carefully keeping his ma.s.sive rack from tangling in the tree branches and the white-tailed doe who surprised Firekeeper the most by their presence.Once or twice a winter the young wolves might run races against the more arrogant of the elk, but to see these two food animals standing without apparent fear among the carnivores brought home the importance of this meeting. She wondered who else might be watching more privately from the concealment of the underbrush.

No names were exchanged, no introductions made. Each of these creatures was so clearly present as a representative for their kind among the Royal Beasts that such flourishes as personal designations were superfluous. The elk was clearly all Elk, even as at times King Tedric spoke as the voice of Hawk Haven.

The raven proved to be the director of this meeting, and Firekeeper was reminded of human posturing when he flared out the long feathers on his legs and neck as he landed on the dried gra.s.s in the center of the circle. He strutted a few paces and then, without the preamble a human would have given, squawked at Firekeeper: "Human, can you confirm the tales told by one peregrine Elation that among your kind has again surfaced the shadow of magic?"

"Among the humans of the lowlands," Firekeeper replied carefully, "such has been rumored, but I have seen nothing that could be confirmed as such."

She thought of Lady Melina's necklace and the magical control it seemed she wielded over her children but chose not to volunteer that information.

I didn't see her use it, the wolf-woman comforted herself, and didn't Hazel Healer say that the power could have been some other thing she called trance induction rather than true magic?

The raven strode a step or two, fanning out his head feathers so that he now appeared to have ears or little horns off the top of his head. Although, like all the Royal Beasts present, the raven tended to be larger than the average of his kind, still he remained a bird on the ground and Firekeeper was not intimidated.

"Human," the raven began, and this time Firekeeper interrupted.

"I can understand," she said dryly, "that the question of whether I am human, as is my shape, or wolf, as is my heart and upbringing, could be a matter of long and useless debate, but, since there appears to be an antagonism to humans in the thread of your questions, I would prefer you address me by my given name. I am Firekeeper and I demand that you not forget it."

There was a murmur at this speech, punctuated by a dry cough of laughter from the puma. The raven flattened his feathers, raised them, then settled.

"Firekeeper," he began again, "although you did not see anything that you could confirm as magic, is it your best estimate-taking the scent from the wind as it were-that the humans believe that the kingdom of Bright Bay was possessed of objects that they think are ensorcelled?"

"Yes," Firekeeper replied. "Elation may not have known to tell you, but those very items of which you speak are no longer in the keeping of Bright Bay, but have been taken away by the woman called Valora, who is now Queen of the Isles."

This caused a hubbub, including a few queries shrieked at Elation who denied any desire to deceive. The peregrine's indignant denials were honest as far as they went. Since she had never reached Revelation Point Castle, the peregrine had not learned of Queen Valora's theft until after her meeting with theMothers.

Firekeeper and Blind Seer had confided in Elation later, during their journey west, and all three had agreed that it was best if Firekeeper presented that report-evidence of her good faith toward whatever the Royal Beasts intended.

After the initial astonishment had pa.s.sed, Firekeeper reported on the circ.u.mstances leading up to Queen Valora's departure for the Isles with the supposedly enchanted objects, speaking with an ease and fluency that would have astonished her human friends, who were accustomed to her more halting command of a language that-to her memory at least-she had not spoken until slightly over half a year earlier.

When she had concluded, a boar with gleaming white tusks, who had arrived during the early stages of the meeting, grunted: "This tale troubles me. Such care to steal speaks of desire to use. One does not go to the work of grubbing up roots merely to leave them rot."

"Nor," agreed the jay, "does such pa.s.sivity mate with what we have observed of this Queen Valora."

"We are agreed then," the raven said, "to continue the course of action we settled upon when first the peregrine Elation brought her report?"

a.s.sent sounded all around, no less enthusiastically in the howling of the One Female than in the bugling of the elk.

Even the white-tailed doe, wide eyes reflecting concerns that Firekeeper could only guess at, stomped a forehoof firmly thrice.

"Human Firekeeper," the raven said, sleeking his feathers then ruffling them again, "we have called you here not only to add your report to that of the peregrine Elation, but so that we might set a charge upon you."

Firekeeper frowned and would have spoken, but to her surprise the One Female nipped at her arm, warning her to silence.

"We want you," the raven continued, "to find these three objects and steal them from their current possessor. Bring them to us and we in our turn shall make certain that they are never again used."

Firekeeper spoke, heedless of the snap of her mother's fangs against her bare skin.

"Steal them?" she asked, her voice high and clear with amazement. "For you? What use do the Royal Beasts have for things made by humans, for humans?"

From seeming sleep the bear said in a voice thick with honey, "Because they were made by humans, for humans-that is why we want them. You are a naked wolf. I accept the evidence of my ears even though it violates the evidence of my nose. Surely you know that nakedness is a human's greatest strength."