Wolf Captured (73 page)

Firekeeper stared. Then she pressed her hands over her eyes and, after releasing them, stared again. The assembly remained. The monstrosities studied her and Blind Seer. In those many eyes Firekeeper found a focus and sought to find individuals.

Integrity broke the silence that had dominated the encounter to this point.

“These,” said the One Female, “are the maimalodalum.”

“Maimalodalum?” Blind Seer repeated, his voice thickening to a barely suppressed growl. “Are they immortal then?”

“No.”

The answer came from a figure that was shaped somewhat like a human, but a human with bluish grey feathers sprouting out all over her body. The feathers were short over her torso and trunk, longer on her arms, as if some force had sought to shape the arms into wings and halted midway in frustration. The bird-woman’s face was human, but her eyes were bird’s eyes, and her nose was short, sharp, and very narrow.

“We are the descendants of the maimalodalum of whom Integrity has told you—the ones in whom the battle between beast soul and human soul pressed the body into conflict, so that rather than gaining the ability to change into one form or the other the soul was trapped within a body that was neither.”

Firekeeper swallowed hard. This bird-woman reminded her somewhat of a shape Blind Seer had taken in a dream forgotten until this moment. Yet if the bird-woman was unsettling as a dream, many of those clustered behind her were nightmares. This creature at least wed two recognizable forms but most of the others borrowed from four or five sources, merging them into function without harmony.

So there were wolf’s ears on a mostly human head, this head attached via a long neck to a body crafted in hybrid of wolf and jaguar, the whole overfurred with spots akin to those on a jaguar’s coat though colored in shades of grey, not gold and black.

Another creature possessed an eagle’s head on a snake’s body. The sleek scaled torso sprouted very human arms and legs, though these were patterned over with scales to match the whole rather than naked as human limbs should be. The latter portion of the snake torso trailed behind the creature’s legs as if it were the tail on an upright lizard.

Yet another of these maimalodalum bore a superficial resemblance to a hirsute man or a brown bear standing on its hind legs. Then she noticed the maimalodalu’s hands and feet ended in heavy, rounded claws. She looked at its face, expecting to meet the small fierce eyes of a bear, and found instead the slit pupils of a snake. The tongue that lashed out as the creature inspected them was a snake’s as well.

And these were the creatures easily parsed. The others possessed such an incomprehensible blending of limbs furred, scaled, and naked, of bodies defended by fangs, claws, stingers, that Firekeeper found herself studying details. Her mind simply refused to grasp the whole.

Only one thing was constant in all the maimalodalum. Whatever their shape, color, or size, the eyes that studied Firekeeper in return held intelligence. The weirdly shaped bodies bore themselves with rational control. The Royal Beasts who had raised Firekeeper had divided the spectrum of living things between Royal Kin and Cousins, and in the maimalodalum Firekeeper could not deny that what stood before her were kin.

At her side where his fur brushed lightly against her, Firekeeper felt Blind Seer tremble. She knew that at the least excuse he would flee. She, too, wanted to run, but after her earlier panic she was done with running. Run as fast as she would, the puzzle offered by these strange creatures would remain, and though she might swim all the way back to Port Haven, and from there run west into the mountains, and there hide beneath her mother’s belly, still the question would remain.

“You are the descendants of the maimalodalum,” Firekeeper said, forcing her voice not to quaver. “Yet I thought the beast-souled were one and one. Your shapes hold many.”

The bear-snake-man growled, “Your eyes are not impaired, at least.”

Firekeeper flared, “But how? How has that happened? Did the spells go amiss? Did the plague heat twist you so?”

The bear-snake-man replied, “Yes, but not as you mean it. We are the descendants of the maimalodalum who survived the Fire Plague. Those who bore us came here for safety—and for other reasons—and so we have remained.”

“Those who bore you?” Firekeeper tried to stifle the distaste in her voice, but the bear-snake-man heard it nonetheless.

“So are love and children only for the beautiful, Firekeeper? Are they only for those who resemble each other? I thought you would better understand—given your own inclinations.”

Firekeeper flushed hot with shame.

“I … am stupid. The Wise Wolves told me of how the yarimaimalom once bred for talents and tainted their blood. I thought … I am a fool and very confused. Forgive me.”

The bird-woman spoke. “Our blood is not tainted from overbreeding as is that of our Wise kin. We are children of the yarimaimalom who won their struggle against the sorcerers, yet that battle is one that cannot really be won. Many who defeated the attempt to take their forms and kill their will died. Those who lived found themselves trapped in bodies that were neither one creature nor the other. These fled into the wilds, knowing the sorcerers would destroy them. The yarimaimalom, however repulsed they might have been, at least felt pity.”

The human-wolf-jaguar spoke, and at the sound of that voice Firekeeper felt a strange thrill, though the voice was rough and not at all musical.

“There were three compensations given to those who survived what the sorcerers would have done to them. First, although some were sterile, most could have children—if they could find a mate.” The too-human lips curved. “I believe wolves have a saying ‘Like knows like best.’ We have no ‘like’ but ourselves, and our greatest likeness is that we are all unlike.”

Firekeeper nodded understanding, but was still too ashamed to speak.

The human-wolf-jaguar went on, “The second compensation was that though many of our ancestors fell ill during the Fire Plague, very few died. The third compensation is related to this. Just as we inherited spots or fangs or claws from the Beast portion of our pairing, so we inherited traits from the human side. Only sorcerers could attempt to become maimalodalum, and the ability to do magic is a talent, not merely a skill.”

Blind Seer spoke as one who thinks aloud: “So all of you are sorcerers?”

“Not quite, Blind Seer. Rather all of us have a latent sensitivity to sorcery—a sense rather than an ability.”

“I do not understand,” Blind Seer confessed.

“Nor I,” Firekeeper said.

“Think of any of your senses,” the human-wolf-jaguar said. “Vision, perhaps. You can see what is in your line of sight, but you cannot take out your eyes and throw them away from you and still see what they gaze upon. So it is with us. We can sense sorcery, look upon it as it were, hear its call, feel its vibrations, taste its tang in the air, smell its taint—but we cannot work original magic any more than you can manipulate an item merely by looking upon it or hearing the sounds it makes.”

Firekeeper blinked. “That is a very good explanation.”

“We have had,” the bear-snake-man said, his earlier irritability dampened now, “a long time to work on it. Generations, in fact.”

Firekeeper felt a blush rising again, but tried to answer calmly, “Then you have spent your time well.”

The bird-woman gave a dry little laugh. “We are glad you think so.”

“I stumble over my feet again,” Firekeeper said, “but then where these things are concerned I am a pup beginning to walk. I will make no excuses, but try to remember my manners. I am called Firekeeper. This is Blind Seer. May we ask what to call you?”

“She reminds us of our manners,” shrieked the eagle-headed maimalodalu, the one with the snake’s body and human limbs.

To Firekeeper’s surprise, this one’s language was that of the yarimaimalom, though those with human mouths had spoken Liglimosh—a thing she had not thought about until now. She said nothing of this contrast, for the eagle-headed one was continuing.

“Prettily done, Firekeeper. We have had warning of your coming, but you have had little warning of us. Perhaps you are not the only one who should be shamed.”

The eagle head turned to look at Firekeeper sideways, after the manner of birds. “I am called Sky-Dreaming-Earth-Bound, but Sky is enough.”

One by one the others introduced themselves, and Firekeeper realized that she could understand them all, no matter their manner of speech. Moreover, they could all understand each other and those with human facial features could, like Firekeeper herself, speak the language of the yarimaimalom.

It seems,
Firekeeper thought,
that the Liglimom could have found the translator they desired closer to home, but I do not think they would have welcomed these creatures. The maimalodalum are too great a reminder of what their ancestors were willing to do to gain power.

Introductions completed, all settled comfortably onto the clean stone floor of the tower. Integrity and Tenacity also remained, and their two puppies ran out and about, calling everyone “aunt” or “uncle” with joyful lack of discrimination as to species. Firekeeper decided that this was the guide to follow and again felt ashamed.

I have long shouted my wolf’s heart is trapped in a human body. How could I have been so. quick to judge by appearances? The maimalodalum all have thinking minds and faithful hearts—though perhaps some are more pleasant than others.

She looked to where the puppies played tag around the gathered creatures, to where Tenacity and Integrity lay side by side.

And I think the Wise Wolves did not tell me all the truth. Here is proof that their tainted do still breed, but these pups show this can be done safely. Perhaps this island is where custom ends and something else rules.

The human-wolf-jaguar turned out to be named something like Defier-of-the-Deities. Firekeeper could not quite make sense of the term, for neither the Royal Beasts nor the humans she knew best had deities who could be defied. She decided that “Questioner” or “Challenger” might have been this creature’s name had he not been born where gods were believed in, and the maimalodalu agreed.

“Call me Questioner, if that is easier for your mind,” he said. “I have been called worse.”

There was a smattering of what, despite the many different-shaped throats and noses that shaped it, was clearly laughter.

“Once we learned that you had been told the tale of the maimalodalum,” Questioner said, “we knew you would ask the Wise Wolves if the tale held any truth.”

“We?” Firekeeper asked. “Who is this ‘we’?”

Questioner’s ears flattened in annoyance.

“Little Two-legs, do you think you have gone hither and yon unwatched, unobserved? Even as the Liglimom find you unsettling, so do we. Truth the jaguar is nearly mad from her inability to read anything of the future where you are concerned. When she learned—a raven bore her the tale—that you had been told of the maimalodalum, for once her visions were clear. You were to be told the truth of the tale, but only in the right place, where you could not deny the uglier realities. You accepted those realities far more immediately than any of us had thought one so filled with hope and desire could, but still we felt you must see us.”

Firekeeper’s mind was trying to hold on to a handful of thoughts at once, each as confusing as the other. She spoke the simplest.

“Raven told her?”

“The ravens are interested in you,” Questioner replied. “They rather like you, in fact. They knew Derian would bring you news from the mainland and worried it would trouble you. They thought to offer counsel and so listened to your conversation in order to know what to say.”

Firekeeper doubted this altruism, but didn’t press for another explanation. The yarimaimalom had permitted her to come into their sanctuary, but they had protected themselves from possible betrayal by spying on her. Very well. It was a wise precaution.

“I trouble Truth’s visions?” Firekeeper asked. “Just me or all three of us newcomers?”

“You mostly,” Questioner replied, “as I understand it. However, the more closely anything is connected to you, the more muddled the visions become. Therefore, Blind Seer is as hard to read as you are. Unless the matter deals with horses, so is Derian.”

Firekeeper felt a touch of longing to see Derian; then she thought of her current company and was glad he was spared this shock. At least she and Blind Seer could understand what was said here. Derian would be at least half deaf.

Almost unbidden the next words came to her lips.

“Questioner, you called me ‘Little Two-legs.’ No one calls me that but my close kin, and few enough among them have used the name these last years since I am grown. Your voice troubles me. I think I know it, but I could not.”

Questioner looked at her, his ears speaking wolf, his eyes wholly human. His eyes were blue, Firekeeper suddenly noticed. The realization made her feel very strange.

“Many years ago,” Questioner said, his tone detached, “a maimalodalu thought he could do what no other had done since the days when yarimaimalom made treaty with humans and so exiled themselves from others of their kind. He thought he could explain our customs, reopen contact. He thought because he questioned, he could answer questions. He was wrong.”

“You?” Firekeeper said. “You came north?”

“It was a long journey and a hard one. I found little welcome and less liking for the message I carried, but there were exceptions. One of these was in a place you and Blind Seer know well, a territory west of the Iron Mountains where the wolves watch against the coming of humans.”

Blind Seer said gape-jawed, “Our home territory?”

“Just so,” Questioner replied. “Chance was with me when I came to that place—chance or the will of the deities. I arrived soon after humans had made the crossing from the lands to the east. The Royal Wolves were crazed with fear, dredging up from half-remembered legends what little they knew about humankind. They might have slain the humans out of hand, but I convinced them to do otherwise. I told them how to the south we lived peacefully, even profitably with humans. My words blended with the Royal Wolves’ own reluctance to kill for no reason, and so the humans lived.”