Wizard of the Grove (40 page)

A linen bandage soon covered Raulin from armpits to waist. Although exposed flesh rippled with goose-bumps, he only shrugged his coat closed. Putting on freezing cold clothes underneath it would do more harm than good at this point. A fire would draw the wer. The small campstove threw heat only to the cooking surface; not enough to warm clothing.

“I'll be okay,” he answered Jago's silent question, bending to complete the packs. “The coat's warm enough for fighting.”

Jago nodded, there not being much else he could do, and in a little while Raulin helped him into his pack. He tried to ignore Lord Death, whose patience appeared to be growing short.

“He won't need that,” Lord Death snapped as Raulin settled his own pack and loaded the crossbow.

“Why not?” Jago asked, waving Raulin quiet.

“Because I will lead you to Crystal on paths the wer do not walk.”

“You?”

“What's he saying?” Raulin demanded.

“He says you don't need the crossbow. That he'll lead us to Crystal on paths the wer don't walk.”

“He will?” Raulin turned over the idea. Lord Death could see the wer, but the wer couldn't see him. Jago could follow his direction and he, Raulin, could follow Jago. “It might work.” He unloaded the bow and hung it from his pack by the quiver, out of the way but near to hand. His brow furrowed. “Ask him if . . .”

“He can hear
you,”
Jago interrupted.

“Yeah, well . . .” Raulin straightened and spoke where Jago pointed. “If you can get in and out of there without being seen, why do you need us?”

“Tell your brother,” Lord Death said to Jago, “that I cannot carry Crystal if it comes to that.” He paused and fought to keep anything at all from showing on his face or in his voice as he added, “He can.”

*   *   *

Crystal sat alone in the cavern for what seemed a very long time. She ran her fingers lightly over the band on her head and decided it was the same material as the rod. It fit snugly, almost as if it had been made for her head. It was a power binding of some kind, of that she was certain. Tentatively she reached in and directed the healing that still went on. Her power responded.

Cautiously, she manipulated and tested and discovered that everything appeared to be under her control. Her shields had remained up and not even Zarsheiy was missing. That surprised her, for there had been nothing containing the fire goddess when the cats had burned. Nor could she understand why Zarsheiy stayed so silent; this situation should've called forth scathing remarks.

She's sulking.

Crystal recognized Tayja's voice.

The link between you and her and Avreen was so strong that she found herself back behind the barriers before she could even think of freedom.

Avreen worked with me?

Of course, child, you've given her ample reason to stay.

Crystal felt herself flush. Raulin. She sighed and wondered if Raulin realized they had more of an audience each night than Jago, who patiently killed time by the fire. She touched the places the brothers held in her heart, knew they continued to live, and reached out with her power to call them.

Pain.

Screaming and writhing, she clutched at her head. Hot knives drove into her brain. A vise tightened and crushed. Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

“So you have discovered what the cap can do.”

Gasping, she scrambled back into a sitting position, her fingers tearing at the bands.

The old wer who stood over her smiled. “You cannot remove it,” he said, “and if you try to use power against it, or to augment your strength, or in any way it finds your actions aggressive,” he shrugged, “you now know what will happen. The wizards,” his lips curled back in a snarl of pure hate, “built their devices of torment well.” He flicked a hoary nail against the cap. “With this they could keep their fellows captive, healthy, whole, and helpless. You cannot use your powers to escape.”

Hoarse from screaming, Crystal rasped, “They made this to use on each other?”

He spread his hands. “Who else has power to trap? As the wizards grew more powerful, their only adversaries were each other. Did you not destroy the only other one of your kind?”

“That was different!”

“He is still dead.”

“I'm not like other wizards!”

“I see no difference.”

Crystal worked her weight up the wall until she stood looking down at him. Small things hurt, but even her nose had begun to function again. She could smell the heavy animal scent of both the caverns and the wer who faced her. Basically, she was whole. For now. “Why,” she asked with dignity, “am I alive?”

“Now? Specifically?” He slid his hands beneath the loose poncho he wore, a piece of clothing easy to slip out of in wolf form. His smile showed a broken tooth and dripped with malice. “We've waited many generations to catch a wizard. To visit on you some of the torment your kind laid on us. When we escaped during the Doom, we stole what toys we could. One brought you low. One you wear.”

“But I had nothing to do with your creation . . .”

“It doesn't matter!” He spat the words. “You are wizard!”

For an instant a craggy gray wolf stood before her, its lean and hollow flanks jutting from the poncho. Pale eyes blazed with rage. Then the old man stood there again, breathing heavily through his nose, obviously fighting to keep his emotions under control.

“It's been thousands of years,” Crystal said, shaken, “why do you still hate wizards so?”

“You see,” he snarled, “but you do not understand.” He turned and began to walk across the cavern. “Follow. I will make you understand. And then you will begin to pay.”

*   *   *

The wolf on guard at the entrance to the wers' tunnels reclined, head on paws, half asleep. Young and complacent, sure the wer were the only predators in the valley, the attack took him by surprise. In the brief struggle, he flicked into his manshape and Jago slammed him behind the ear with his dagger hilt. As he fell, he became wolf again.

“We can't tie him,” Jago pointed out, grabbing him by the forelegs and dragging him away. “If he changes, the rope will slice his hands off.”

“Do you care?” Raulin asked, remembering the sounds of heavy feet and fists pounding against Crystal.

“He's just a kid . . .”

Raulin sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”

They blocked the tunnel, hoping more to slow the guard than to stop him entirely.

“What if he doesn't try to follow and just goes for help.”

“This is the only way into the valley from the mountain,” Lord Death explained, eyeing the rock pile impatiently. “If he goes for help, it will take him some time and accomplish the same thing as far as we are concerned.”

They advanced into the mountain, their eyes adapting in the darkness enough to pick out the darker shadows that marked companions. Moving as quietly as they could, Raulin followed Jago who followed Lord Death who made no noise at all.

Not a great deal of time had passed when Jago flattened against the rock. Raulin mirrored the move a second later. They'd come to a fork, one branch black and deserted, the other lit—although the torches burned so far apart they gave a twilight effect at best. No sounds came from the inhabited passage but given the freshness of the torches, wer could not be far.

Lord Death walked forward, passed the torch, and disappeared into the gloom.

The brothers waited. And waited.

Raulin wrinkled his nose against the overpowering odor of pine. He picked a crushed needle out of his mustache and fought the urge to sneeze.
Not many walking pine trees in these parts
he'd pointed out when Lord Death had suggested they hide their scent.

And there are no mortals at all,
Lord Death had pointed out in turn.
The wer will react less to the smell of pine than the smell of meat.

Meat. Raulin hadn't wanted to ask.

Jago started as Lord Death stepped out of air in front of him. The movement jarred his hand and he bit back a curse.

“I suggest you keep it quieter,” Lord Death warned. “We are
reaching the inhabited sections of the mountain and must go carefully. Come, this section is safe.”

They passed the first torch and came to a small cave angling back into the rock. Faintly, over the smell of pine clotting their noses, came the musky scent of cat. The brothers froze.

Lord Death, no longer sensing them following, stopped, turned, and glared. “I said it was safe. They will not wake for some time, I have touched their dreams.”

His mouth close to Raulin's ear, Jago repeated Lord Death's words.

As they moved on, Raulin shook his head.
Dreams touched by Death,
he thought.
Nice.

*   *   *

The old wer led Crystal to a small cavern spilling soft lamplight into the tunnel; a higher level of technology than any she'd yet seen. Jason's wolfshape lay across the door, not on guard for his attention was turned within. When he caught their scent, he whirled, rising into manshape with the move. Gray paste covered his arrow wound.

“What are you doing here, wizard?” he growled.

“I brought her, Jason.”

“Why?”

“To show her why we hate.”

A whimper from the cavern and Jason's hands clenched into fists. His golden eyes filled with fury “Show herrrr.” The last came out more growl than word as the great black wolf trembled with the effort not to attack.

Another whimper spun him back into the cavern.

“Go.” The old wer pointed and Crystal stepped forward.

The cavern, the size of a large bedchamber, held a low table and a stool, rough shelves cut into the rock walls and filled with carvings of wer in all their shapes, and a large box bed, heaped high with furs. The lamp sat on the table, close by the bed. An ancient woman knelt by the box and crooned, soft and comforting, too low to be heard more than a few feet away. The young woman on the bed was obviously in labor.

“In the early months,” the old wer said softly in Crystal's ear, “the mother's changing does no harm, but after the wolf is ready to be born she must stay in womanshape to carry the mortal half to term. If she changes, the child and usually the mother as well dies. This is the torment the wizards gave us; strong emotion sets off the change outside of our control. Surprise, anger . . .” He paused and the woman on the bed whimpered again as a contraction rippled her swollen belly. “. . . pain.”

“Then why . . .”

“Our lives are long and in wolfshape the urge to mate is very strong. Although wer did not ask to be created, neither do wer wish to die. Do you wonder why we hate you?”

“The cats . . .”

“Are more indolent by nature so their time is a little less hard. They have three males for every female. We have five.”

Even as Crystal recognized the singsong cadence of the crooning, she saw the trance it was meant to maintain fail.

“Jason?” The young woman's eyes tried to focus as the pain pulled her out of her hypnotic state.

He poked his nose into her hand and she clutched at it, then stroked the cheek of a worried young man.

To Crystal's wizard sight the fingers of the hand seemed shorter than they should and the russet hair grew too thickly across the back.

“No!” she cried aloud, heard an answering cry within, felt the shattering of a goddess bond, and began to move.

The Eldest of the Elder Races had a part in Crystal's making and with Milthra's strength she met Jason's charge and hurled him aside.

When she reached the bed she was already singing, throwing power into her voice regardless of what the cap would do. She rested one hand on the woman's head and the other on her stomach and sang her an easing of pain. The change, barely a heartbeat begun, stopped. The fingers grew longer, the hair less. Then Crystal went deeper, wizard and goddess acting as one, touched the core of the wer, found the flaw, and healed it.

The cry of a newborn blended for a moment with her song, then it continued alone.

When Crystal raised her head, wer jammed the door, drawn by the use of power.

“What . . .” The old wer spread his hands searching for the words.

Crystal swayed, the place where her power had been was an aching void. The fire, the repairing of herself, and now this; she had nothing more to give. “I healed her. She controls her changes now.”

“How? The cap . . .”

“The cap works to prevent escape.” Her head throbbed and the places beneath the cap felt bruised. It had reacted to the power, but it hadn't tried to stop her.

“Why?”

Crystal looked at the girl-child sucking lustily on her mother's breast, squirming as her father licked her clean. “I am not like other wizards,” she told him, and tumbled into the void.

*   *   *

Lord Death stopped, head cocked as though he listened. “Lives. A number of them,” he said suddenly, waving Jago toward one of the small caves. “Hide there until I return for you.”

Jago pulled Raulin through the arched doorway, a small portion of his mind noting that it could never have been naturally carved. “Someone's coming,” he hissed in explanation. “Hide.”

They pressed up against the wall where the angle was too sharp for them to be seen from the passage, packs pushed hard into the rock. They heard the questioning cries of puzzled cats first, and then the soft thud of pads running on stone. The sounds grew louder, filled their ears, then faded.

Raulin relaxed his grip on his dagger, silently released the breath he'd been holding, and sagged against the wall. The wounds under his bandages ached. He stretched, trying to remain flexible but knowing he was stiffening up. He felt Jago still tensed beside him.

“What is it?” he leaned over to whisper.