Through Wolf's Eyes (70 page)

In the glen where—as Elise would later learn—Prince
Newell and Lady Zorana lingered for dalliance and met with disaster,
Firekeeper had a steady fire burning within a ring of river rocks. A
small copper pot—hardly larger than an apple and polished so bright as
to look almost pink—was slung over the flames.

"From my emergency kit," Hazel explained, tying her
mare, a brown horse unremarkable for anything but its calm, to a bush.
"You won't believe how often you need hot water fast and the best thing
available is a kettle large enough to make stew for an entire harvest
crew and cast of thick iron besides. Now, let's get comfortable."

Under her calm authority, Elise positioned her lamp
and two more from Hazel's gear so that, without shedding undue light
outside of the glen, they had enough that they could read each other's
expressions. Firekeeper brought over a couple of logs to act as benches
and when the water boiled Elise brewed rosehip tea. Sapphire set more
water to heat and then Hazel indicated that she was ready to continue.

"From what you told Lady Elise," she said to
Sapphire, "the sapphire—indeed the entire headpiece—is symbolic to you
of the identity which your mother has crafted for you. Is that right?"

Sapphire nodded. "Of who I am."

"And who you are is someone under Lady Melina's
control," Hazel stated unapologetically. "And don't try to deny it. I
saw how you favored your side while you were helping set up our little
parlor here. I've spoken at length with Sir Jared about his talent.
Your injury should be mending now without pain. The wounds were
superficial, though ugly, and were treated almost immediately."

Sapphire bit her lip, then nodded stiffly. "It has
been fourteen days. Very well. I accept that my mother has the ability
to inflict pain on me, pain I shouldn't feel. I'll even admit that
she's done it other times, though I never remember feeling this angry
about it before. What I want to know is do you think this is sorcery or
that trance induction that Elise told me about?"

Hazel sighed. "I wish Elise hadn't told you quite so much.
It will make our task more difficult. To be blunt, I don't know. However, I don't think it matters . . ."

"Doesn't matter!" Sapphire said with a fury that
Elise realized was mostly fear. "It doesn't matter whether my mother is
a sorceress or merely skilled in some form of controlling the mind? How
couldn't it matter?"

Hazel ignored the anger and answered the question.
"Because the tool which she used to effect her control is the same in
either case. It doesn’t matter because if we can—if you can—destroy
that means, then the hold should be broken."

I wonder,
Elise thought uneasily,
just how much Hazel is bluffing. She didn't seem to know this much when we consulted her ten days ago
.

"I've been reading about related matters ever since
Elise brought her own problem to me," Hazel said as if in answer, "and
have consulted most privately with various colleagues. Lady Melina's
fondness for the showy gesture—for using her power over you to enhance
her own reputation rather than keeping it quiet—may be her undoing.
However, I can only show you the way. I cannot do any more."

"What," Sapphire said, "as if I can't already guess, do I need to do?"

Hazel ignored her for a moment. Removing the boiling
water from over the fire, she poured some into a round pottery cup,
then shook in powder from a folded paper packet. This done, she covered
the cup and asked:

"Elise, how much trouble did you have telling Sapphire about your discovery of Lady Melina's powers?"

"Not much," Elise replied, slightly puzzled at this
change of subject. "I felt shy, of course. It's hard to admit you've
been spying on people, even by accident."

"But you didn't feel any pain? No ants biting your tongue?"

"No!" Elise was surprised. "But why should I? Sapphire already knew the truth."

Hazel turned to look at Sapphire. "Tell me, is that
the usual way with your mother's curses? Do they work only when you try
to talk to the uninformed?"

Sapphire shook her head. "I haven't really tried, not
for years, but we never could talk about what she had forbidden, not
even to each other, not without bringing down the curse."

"So, you see, Elise," Hazel said, "what you did is remarkable."

"Do you think it's because we replaced my jet piece?" Elise asked eagerly.

"Yes, I do. When you removed the means by which Lady Melina had laid her hold on you, that hold was broken."

"Then all I need to do," Sapphire said, her disbelief evident, "is take off my coronet?"

"I fear not," Hazel said sadly. "Lady Melina's
control over you is of much greater duration and her curse laid upon
you directly. For you to break her hold, not only must you remove the
sapphire from your brow, you must destroy it."

There was a long silence. When Sapphire spoke her
voice was no longer that of the confident, even arrogant, warrior and
noblewoman but of a very young girl.

"I can't!" she wailed.

"Then you are doomed to remain bound."

"Wait!" Elise said. "Sapphire was talking to me before with no trouble. Maybe the hold is already broken."

"No," Hazel said sadly. "Think back. She told you
about very general things. The closest she came to anything sensitive
was when she mentioned her panic whenever the sapphire was removed—she
said nothing that couldn't be dismissed as superstition. I'd guess
Sapphire knows her own limits very well."

"I do," the other admitted dully. "Perfectly."

Firekeeper, who had hovered at the edge of the
firelight, her back to them so as not to diminish her night vision,
spoke for the first time.

"So we are ended before we begin?"

"No," Sapphire replied with sudden stubborn decisiveness, "I won't let myself be."

Her hands rose to the elegant band about her brow,
rose, fell, and rose again. Elise could see them shaking as Sapphire
fumbled for a catch.

"It's beneath the stone setting," Sapphire said, her voice a
weak semblance of normalcy. "Nice bit of design, really."

Hazel strained the mixture in the pottery cup and
offered it to Sapphire. "It will calm you. I suspect it's similar to
what your mother gave you."

"Then I don't want it!" Sapphire snarled.

With a violent tug she snapped the strap. Elise heard a slight metallic ping as the silver wire parted.

The torn strip dangling from her hand, Sapphire asked, "And now?"

"And now," Hazel replied, "I'm afraid you're going to
need to crush or break the stone. That won't be easy. Sapphires are
quite hard, not as hard as diamonds, but almost."

"Gem cutters manage," Sapphire said, the words
sounding torn from her. Unable to speak further, she put out her free
hand in a mute request for tools.

Hazel said apologetically, "I couldn't get a gem
cutter's wheel in the middle of the night, but I do have a hammer with
a steel head. We can use a large river cobble for an anvil."

Firekeeper brought the latter, pausing to put her
hand on Sapphire's shoulder. Even this slight delay had started
Sapphire trembling again, but she stiffened at Firekeeper's touch.

Elise wondered if Sapphire could not bear pity—or
what she perceived as pity—from a potential rival. For whatever reason,
Sapphire steadied enough to kneel and place the damaged headpiece flat
across the cobble, the blue gem in its center glittering like a single
eye in the lantern light.

Raising the hammer, Sapphire swung with all the power
of muscles trained to use of sword and shield. A thin cry slipped out
between teeth locked in a death's-head grimace. The bright steel arced
down, a blur rather than a solid thing. There was the sound of metal
hitting rock, a sharp stink as of sulphur, a crack . . .

Elise stared in disbelief. Sapphire's blow had struck
the cobble, not the sapphire, splitting the rounded stone in two.
Bending forward, her long black hair masking her face, the hammer
clutched in both hands, Sapphire was whimpering hysterically:

"I can't, I can't, I can't . . . It will kill me if I do. My soul
. . . I can't." The repetitious rhythm of her chant was more terrifying than any scream could be.

"You must!" Elise pleaded, hearing her own voice shrill despite her efforts to keep it level. "You must!"

"I can't!" Sapphire snapped, sitting straight in a sudden motion like an arrow shot from a bow. "I can't . . ."

And her voice sank again.

In the shocked silence, Firekeeper's return with a
new cobble seemed as prosaic as a shopkeeper polishing counters on a
slow day. She crouched beside Sapphire, removed the split cobble, and
placed the headpiece in the new cobble's center.

"I think," the wolf-woman commented sardonically,
"that you are like the Whiner in my pack. She is great hunter except
when anyone bigger face her. She even afraid of me!"

Firekeeper's laughter made plain how ridiculous she
found the thought of any wolf fearing a naked, clawless, fangless
creature like herself.

"I'm not afraid of you!" Sapphire gasped, her gaze still downcast, safe within the sheltering tent of her hair.

"I not say you are, but your mother, she the great
One of your pack and never will her pups rise to challenge her. Never
even will they disperse to found their own packs. You are poor, sad
creatures: can't piss, can't eat, can't breed without mama's word."

That "mama" was said with a rich sneer to
Firekeeper's voice, a sneer that Elise noted did not reach her face.
Sapphire only heard the mockery and some faint shred of pride in her
responded.

Raising her head, she glared at Firekeeper. "You dare! I am a Shield and grandniece to a king."

"You are a weak-spined, mewling pup," Firekeeper said
savagely. "You dine only on the regurgitated pap from your mother's
gut. You crouch so in her shade that you fear a blue rock! A rock!"

She laughed, a cruel sound from deep in her belly, and from the shadows Blind Seer sniggered agreement.

"I'll break your head!" Sapphire shouted, leaping to her feet and swinging the hammer at Firekeeper.

Firekeeper blocked her, hand grasping the descending
forearm and squeezing, forcing the infuriated woman to face the glimmering blue eye of the sapphire on the rock.

"A pup," Firekeeper said steadily, "attacks a
butterfly to show how big he is. So you attack me naked and unarmed as
I am—you with steel death in your hands—because you are a pup. If you
are so terrible, smash that blue stone."

"I thought you said," Sapphire retorted, twisting but unable to get free, "that it was just a stone."

"Then why," came the reasonable voice, just showing
the edge of the effort Firekeeper was exerting to hold the larger woman
in place, "don't you break it?"

She let go then and Sapphire's own twisting spun her
to the ground in front of the makeshift altar with its mute sacrificial
victim across it. With one hand Sapphire caressed the faceted surface
as if it were the face of a lover, perhaps recalling the years during
which it had adorned her brow, the fairest gem of its type in all the
land.

Then Sapphire grasped the hammer with two hands,
raised it above her head, and brought the steel head down with the
force not only of her arms, but of the entire weight of her body behind
it.

Elise surged to her feet, unable to look away, unable
to remain still, knowing in her heart that if Sapphire missed this
time, if the gem refused to break, if she lost courage at the last
moment, that there would never be another attempt, that this was the
last chance and if it failed everything—even the stealing of Lady
Melina's necklace—would have been for nothing.

When the hammer rose, a fine blue dust littered with
tiny fragments of gemstone sparkled on the river rock, brighter even
than the tears that glittered in Sapphire Shield's eyes. But Sapphire
did not weep, only said:

"I guess I'd better have the matching stone from Mother's necklace. We'd better do a thorough job of this."

Elise wrenched the pendant holding the sapphire from
the band. Not bothering to remove the gemstone from the silver that
framed it, Sapphire smashed it, her first blow breaking the
diamond-shaped stone, her second thoroughly flattening the silver and
breaking the gem to pieces.

Rising to her feet a bit unsteadily, Sapphire looked at Firekeeper. "Still think me a pup?"

"I think you a great woman," came the reply, and Fire-keeper bowed low. Beside her the enormous grey wolf bowed as well.

Hazel said then, "Do we destroy the rest of the necklace here and now, or should we preserve it for the others?"

"I think," Sapphire said, "that it must be preserved
as proof that this can be done. It's going to be hard enough to
convince my brother and sisters as it is."

"And you," Hazel asked, "how do you feel?"

"Like I've jumped off a cliff only to be caught by
water at the bottom and nearly drowned. My knees are shaking, my head
is throbbing, and," Sapphire grinned, "my side has stopped hurting. I
don't think I've felt better in a long, long time."

"How do you plan to hide from Lady Melina what you've done?" Elise hardly recognized her own voice when she spoke.

"I don't. It's time Mother realized that her control
of me is over and here in this camp with King Tedric near at hand she
should moderate her response to what she will see as my rebellion."

"Do you plan to tell her what . . . what we . . . what you . . . suspect?"

Sapphire shook her head. "Not at all. There's no need. I think I'll just tell Mother that I got tired of her taste in jewelry."

The laughter that followed this announcement was too
loud, too ragged to be cheerful, but it held a bravado more warming
than the bright yellow-orange flames of the camp-fire.

P
RINCE NEWELL SHIELD NOTED
his sister Melina's outrage when Sapphire stopped wearing the
gem-studded headpiece that had been hers since she was small, and
thought Melina's reaction disproportionate.