Spirit of the Wolves (34 page)

I stood on a ledge outside the cave and looked down at the woods below us. The flames couldn't reach us, though the smoke still clawed at my throat. For as far as I could see, the woods were burning. Hidden Grove Gathering Place was ablaze. I heard the screams of prey and hunter alike as every creature in the woods sought safety.

I tried to howl for my mother, but my throat was too raw. I shouldn't have lost sight of her. She could be anywhere, burning or choking down below. Prannan and Amma could be dying in the flames, too. Ázzuen was safe, and TaLi, but the rest of my family could be burning to death below me. I was supposed to be a pack leader, but I was as helpless as a newborn pup. For the fire burned so far and fast that it seemed nothing could escape it.

DavRian and his friends must have lit a thousand fires. I couldn't see Kaar from where I stood, but I couldn't believe it would survive the flames. DavRian had been willing to poison humans to get to us. Now it seemed he didn't care if everything in the land died. In trying to destroy us, the humans were destroying everything around them. They were uncontrollable, and my attempts to influence them had led once again to horror. I was no more than a drelshik, causing pain wherever I went.

I could do nothing but stand gasping above the flames, watching as my hopes for fulfilling the Promise burned.

H
ot stones burned my paws, and sharp bits of wood poked painfully between the pads of my feet as I picked my way down the Hill Rock the next morning. The fire had burned itself out, but the late-morning air was still bitter with recent smoke. Tlitoo hovered above me, scanning the desolate land below us. Ázzuen watched from the mouth of the cave, guarding BreLan and the wounded TaLi as the humans slept, exhausted from escaping the fire. I was tired, too, but I needed to know what had happened in the human village and the Sentinel lands, and if I really had failed as completely as it seemed.

From the time we were smallpups, barely able to scent the difference between the tracks of a rabbit and those of a hare, we were told that if humans and wolves came together, disaster would follow. I hadn't believed it. I had thought it an exaggeration, a way for the Greatwolves to keep things the way they were. I didn't believe that the love I felt for TaLi and the
bond my packmates felt for their humans could be so dangerous. I believed that DavRian was a malicious human and that his killing of NiaLi and JaliMin were acts of isolated madness. I could not have been more wrong. I'd thought that if I loved the humans enough, that if they loved us enough, it would stop the vicious humans from destroying us. It had not.

I reached what had been the forest floor. Oak trees, willows, and birches remained standing; their moist trunks and high branches had protected them somewhat from the flames. The pines and spruce were gone, or so charred as to be unrecognizable. I made my way carefully through the burned land.

A dead fox stared up at me, its eyes fixed, its mouth frozen in a snarl. I kept walking. A family of rabbits lay dead next to what must have been their den, and I understood that I had brought death to more than just wolves. The burned place seemed to go on and on. I came upon the gorse patch and realized I was headed the wrong way. I closed my eyes to better smell the land around me and picked up the faint scent of running water. I followed it to the stretch of river where BreLan had tried to teach TaLi to swim. I lapped at it thirstily. Tlitoo drank beside me.

“Wolflet,” he said. “Someone was just here.”

He was peering down at a paw print in the mud. I lowered my nose to it. My mother's scent rose from it, and it was fresh, left after the fire had passed through. My legs weakened under me with relief. My mother was alive, or had been right after the fire. The knowledge that she lived gave me as much strength as had the fresh water in my parched throat. I couldn't bear the thought of losing her again.

“Do you want to follow her, wolf?”

The scent led into the river and then disappeared, which meant she had run in the water, whether to avoid detection or cool her paws I didn't know, but it would take time to track her. I took a deep breath. She was alive. Ázzuen and TaLi were alive. I could handle whatever else came.

“Later,” I said. “Let's keep going.”

Neither of us spoke as we left the river to make our way to the krianan village.

The fire had burned so hot there that nothing had survived except the oldest, strongest trees. I hoped some of the krianans might still live. They knew the woods as well as any wolf, and they might have sensed the fire coming. They might have had time to get away.

The flames had been too fierce. One by one I found the krianans, their bodies charred almost beyond scent recognition. I didn't understand why the krianan village had burned so terribly. There were rocky fields between the start of the fire and the krianans' home that should have offered them some protection. I remembered that RalZun had returned to their village to talk to them. I prayed that the crafty old man had escaped before the fire came.

“Kaala,” Tlitoo said. He had never called me by name before, in all the time I'd known him. His voice was loud in the silence around us. There was no sound of prey or other creatures, just the warm wind lifting and spreading the ash around us. “We must go to the big village.”

I didn't want to. I didn't want to find out how badly I had failed. I didn't want to see more humans and wolves dead because of me, or hear living ones say that we'd destroyed their
home. But that was a coward's way out. I allowed Tlitoo to lead me toward the village.

I knew we'd reached the edge of Kaar by the stack of rhino bones piled high near the charred remains of the spruce grove. The village was almost completely destroyed, but bits of the larger structures still stood smoldering in the center of the largest clearing. It was abandoned, at least by the living. There were bodies everywhere. There were so many dead that I wondered if any of the people of Kaar had survived. I made my way through the village, sniffing as I went. Jlela winged down from the branches of a singed elm to land beside Tlitoo. It was an old tree, and it had stood alone without bushes or smaller trees around it.

“They wished to burn you from their territory,” Jlela croaked. “They said wolves poisoned the land and the land must be cleansed. I hid in the tree and heard them say so. The one called DavRian burned the krianan village on purpose, too. He said the old krianans are as much a threat as the wolves. That was how the fire got away from them. They burned their own home.” She warbled and flew back up to an elm branch. “Everything burned. Most of the village died. The ones left are going to Laan village. They have agreed that the old krianans are a danger to them and that they will no longer follow their ways.”

I growled to myself. I'd known as soon as HesMi chased us away from the village that we'd lost the humans of Kaar. Now DavRian would turn other humans against us, too. The ravens croaked to each other. I watched as they walked a few paces, took flight to land on a pile of bones or fallen shelter, and then hopped to perch on another pile of death or destruction.

I lifted my muzzle to the air, trying to sniff out who was alive and who was dead, but my nose was clogged with the scent of smoke. I sat and sneezed several times, then picked up the faint scent of wolf and followed it.

That was when I found Prannan and Amma lying dead next to two humans.

“They were sleeping in one of the humans' shelters,” Jlela quorked. “They stayed at their slow humans' side and did not escape in time. I tried to lead them away but they had eyes only for their humans.”

I felt such a powerful wave of shame that I could hardly stand. The first responsibility of a leaderwolf is to protect the wolves who follow her. Amma and Prannan had trusted me and I had led them to their deaths. I'd done everything I could think of to win the humans over in order to save wolfkind. Instead I had killed the wolves most deserving of my protection. When I was born, of mixed blood and with the mark of the crescent moon on my chest, Ruuqo had said I was unlucky. Milsindra said I was the destroyer of wolfkind. They were both right.

“Wolf, come here,” Tlitoo said. He was standing over something that moved ever so slightly.

I trudged over to him. He bent over a raven, its chest moving up and down with great effort, its beady eyes half open.

“He says that some humans ran away. HesMi did not. She stayed to save the others and died with them,” Tlitoo said. “He says we must not give up. He says we are close to what we need. He says not to forget what you have learned as Nejakilakin.”

The dying bird lifted his head and glared at me, opening and closing his beak. “You do not have time for regret,” he croaked. “You do not have time to be foolhardy. You must not make the mistakes those before you have made.” There was something so familiar about him.

“She must find a way to talk to the girl,” he ordered Tlitoo. “There is a way. Find it.”

I realized then what was so familiar about the old raven. His raspy voice and piercing gaze were the same as RalZun's. RalZun, who leapt down from the trees as if he had wings.

I lowered my nose to him. He smelled of coming death. I wanted to comfort him, but the fierceness in his gaze stopped me.

“Are you human or raven?” I asked him.

“I am Nejakilakin,” he clacked at me. “Before that I was the raven king. I have stayed alive as long as I could so the new Neja can take over. Do not waste my effort.”

“I won't,” I said.

He struggled to his feet, panted hard, and flew a few wolflengths from us. Then he fell and did not rise again.

“Can you do that?” I whispered to Tlitoo. “Can you become human?”

“I do not know,” he said. “I have never heard of any raven who could.” He gently prodded the old raven's body. “But he was very old and I am very young. You have met him before, wolf.”

“Hzralzu,” I said. He was the ancient raven who had hunted with Navdru when he was a youngwolf, and who had stood with Indru when I'd met him in the Inejalun nearly a moon before. I didn't understand how a raven could be
human and bird at the same time. I didn't understand how he could have lived since the time of Indru only to die in the flames of DavRian's fire.

His words had shaken me from my self-pity. I looked at Prannan and Amma and buried my nose in their fur one more time. They were not badly burned, but looked as if they had suffocated, as creatures did in a fire. They had died for the Promise. RalZun had died, and HesMi and so many others. If I gave up now, their deaths would have been for nothing. DavRian would win. I got angry, and my head cleared. I would not just roll over like a curl-tail and give up. I would fight DavRian until there was no more breath in me. The humans were slow. Perhaps I could get to Laan village before they did.

“How far is it to Laan?” I asked Tlitoo.

“It is just beyond the field where the Sentinels killed the streckwolves,” Tlitoo answered, his eyes agleam.

“Let's go,” I said.

An hour's lope later, past charred woods and creatures burned so badly I could not tell what kind of beast they were, we reached the end of the fire's path. I found a stream and drank deeply. Then I sank my head into it, allowing the water to run into my eyes and out of my nose, clearing away the burned scents. My nose began to pick up the scents of life: a family of mice skittering behind me, a grouse picking its way to the water. My mother's scent was there, too, less than an hour old. All around us, the creatures that had not been killed began to stir. I heard the buzzing of insects, then the hesitant steps of the grouse. I snapped up a small fish from the stream,
swallowing it whole. My stomach came to life and I began stalking the grouse. It was as fire-weary as I was and didn't smell me coming. I pounced on it, making a clean kill and devouring it so quickly that I had to stand still for a moment to keep it in my belly.

Feeling revived, I set out again. In the woods beyond the grassless field where the streckwolves had died, I found the village of Laan. Nestled in a clearing in an elm wood, it was smaller than Kaar, but still larger than TaLi's village in the Wide Valley. I hid for a moment in the wood surrounding it, watching the village from behind a juniper. A stocky dark-furred male seemed to be their leader. When I saw him standing alone near a shelter, I began to creep toward him.

Then I heard DavRian's voice, and IniMin's. They called out a greeting as they approached Laan. I cringed. I had hoped to get to the villagers of Laan before they did.

IniMin led a tired group of humans into Laan. There were perhaps twenty of them, all that was left of the village of Kaar. From the way the others followed behind him and waited for him to speak first, it was clear they saw him as their leader now that HesMi was gone. DavRian stood just to his right, his head held high.

The humans of Laan came forward, and the stocky male greeted IniMin.