Wolf Hunting (10 page)

“But the books can be carried away,” he went on. “While I pack them, I would like you to inspect whatever else is here for some indication of who this place was made to hold.”

“That is my desire also,” Blind Seer growled, “for whoever he is, he seems far too interested in my Firekeeper.”

FIREKEEPER DID NOT BEGRUDGE PLIK his desire to take the books away. After all, Truth would have remained locked behind the silver door if the maimalodalum had not preserved some of the old knowledge. She did rather begrudge the way the raccoon-man took each one and shook it, seeking for things hidden between the leaves, before packing it in a sack that had once contained provisions.

Concerned lest she be asked to join him in his wearisome task, the wolf-woman methodically searched the other rooms. She began with the sleeping room. This was perhaps the most normal room of the four, but even so, there were not the things she had come to expect where humans made their lairs.

Blind Seer came in as she was patting down the mattress, looking for anything that might have been hidden within.

“Phew!” he said, sneezing. “It reeks of human male.”

He paused and sniffed again. “And yet, not. There is something strange here.”

“Strange?”

“I cannot say. How can one compare something to something when one has met nothing like?”

Firekeeper nodded. “Whoever slept here was clean, at least. No fleas, no lice, no bedbugs. Tell me, Blind Seer, have you noticed what is odd about this place?”

“What is not odd?” the wolf countered.

Firekeeper swatted at him, but went on. “I mean there are none of those little things humans accumulate where they live. Derian had them, so did Elise, even when we traveled. Small things of little use except that they reminded the owner of someone else, somewhere else.”

Blind Seer studied the room, his blue eyes intent.

“You are right. There are no mementos here—unless the books may be such. Perhaps this place was like an inn, not the den of one man, but used by many.”

Firekeeper frowned. “My nose is not yours, but wherever I have searched there has only been one stranger’s scent.”

“True.”

They passed from the bedchamber to the room through which the water flowed. Unlike the rest of the place, which was still and cold and somehow dead, this place was alive with the chuckling of the running water. The waters were clean and fresh, but in the dim light they appeared shadowed and opaque rather than clear.

Firekeeper felt a sudden knowledge.

“I think whoever lived here—whoever it was who called to Truth—must have loved this room and this stream. I wonder that he did not let the waters carry him away with them.”

She plunged one bare arm into the water. “Cold, but not too cold.”

Still holding her arm beneath the surface, Firekeeper moved to where the water flowed away near the wall and probed. “Ah, the outlet is small, and a grille has been set over it, as if even the stupid fish were to be kept out. How firmly is it set, I wonder.”

She leaned forward. There was a current, but not so powerful that she need fear it would drag her under. She located the bottom edge of the grille, found it set as firmly in the stone as the silver block had been in the wall. Her fingers found something else, too: pieces of something hard and solid with many oddly shaped edges. They were no larger than her hand and rolled slightly in the current, confirming that they were not anchored.

“Did he leave his cooking things here to be drawn out when they were needed?” she asked.

“Pull out what you have found,” Blind Seer replied practically. “Why guess when you can know? Do you think you can reach what is there without going for a swim?”

“I think so. Yes. One …” Firekeeper closed her fingers around something and set it dripping on the stone. “Two. Three. A fourth … I think that is all. What do we have?”

Blind Seer had been sniffing at her find. “Stone. Wet stone. That is all my nose tells me. Let us take them where the light is better.”

Firekeeper agreed. She could tell the stone had been worked, but in the dim light little more. Shaking off the worst of the water, she gathered up the four pieces and carried them into the room with the silver block, where the light was best.

Plik’s feet slapping against the tiled floor announced him. “What have you found?”

Firekeeper was rubbing one piece against her tattered loincloth to dry it. “Carved stones. They were hidden under the water.”

She inspected her find. “Plik, my eyes do not always see what humans call art, but I think this is a little statue of a woman.”

Plik took it from her. “Your eyes see perfectly well. This is a woman. That broken one is a man in the attire of the Liglimom. See the trouser legs gathered at the bottom and the full blouse?”

Firekeeper had no eye for details of dress. She had been inspecting another piece. It was also a woman, but this time it was a woman she thought she recognized.

“Queen Valora!” she said, and heard her voice break in astonishment.

V

“QUEEN VALORA?” Plik looked at Firekeeper. The wolf-woman’s fingers were curled tightly around the stone figurine. “Is this figure a portrait of someone you know?”

Firekeeper nodded slowly. “I have seen Queen Valora. She is not a friend, not precisely an enemy—though I think she would be pleased to do us harm if she could.”

Blind Seer had nosed Firekeeper’s fingers into uncurling, and was now inspecting the figurine.

“I think I see the resemblance,” he said. “Take a look at the base, Firekeeper. Something interesting there.”

Firekeeper did so and frowned. “Symbols carved deeply into the stone. Two sets—one is the emblem for the kingdom of Bright Bay. The other, that one also seems familiar, but I am not sure where I have seen it.”

Blind Seer snorted. “I remember. It is the emblem of the new Kingdom of the Isles.”

“How?” Firekeeper looked at Plik, accusation in her dark eyes. “How did this come here? I thought the Liglimom knew as little of the northern lands as the north did of this place. How did this come here?”

Plik swallowed an involuntary surge of fear. “I don’t know. You say you know this woman. She is a contemporary then, not a historical figure?”

“She is alive,” Firekeeper said. “Or was, last I heard. Not only does she live, these emblems speak of recent knowledge of her. First Valora was queen of Bright Bay. About three years ago she lost her right to rule. Since then she has been queen only of the Isles.”

“Queen,” Plik said, making sure he understood the foreign term. “First Female.”

“First Human,” Firekeeper corrected. “The One of her pack. After the way of the northern humans, Valora’s ruling came to her from having been born to the right parents, not from any deed of her own.”

Plik wanted to ask any number of questions about this peculiar concept of government, but a feverish brightness in Firekeeper’s eyes stayed him. The wolf-woman was now turning over the other figures.

“This one I do not know—the costume is again foreign. This one here. See, again the dress is northern. A woman again, to judge from the skirts. Her head is missing.”

“I think,” Blind Seer said, “we should find that head if we can. Would you be willing to check beneath the waters again?”

Firekeeper nodded. Her lips were set so tightly that Plik wondered if she had suspicions as to who that broken figure might represent. Without another word, she exited the room of the silver block. A moment later, they heard faint splashing as she felt around in the water.

Blind Seer had laid down alongside the figurines, his ears cocked to listen. “Plik, do you recognize any depicted in these figurines?”

“No,” Plik replied. “Until Firekeeper came to Misheemnekuru, I had only glimpsed humans at a distance, out on the waters in their boats. My kind does not mingle with humanity—and mingles very little with the Beasts.”

“Ah …” Blind Seer said. “Well, the ravens may be of help there.”

The Royal Wolf might have elucidated more of his thoughts, but at that moment Firekeeper re-entered the room. She had shed her loincloth. Water streamed from her naked body and wet hair. She was strapping her leather knife belt back around her waist, the blade in her hand, held away from any chance contact with damp.

Apparently, merely groping around with her hands in the water had not been sufficient. She had gone diving, and, judging from what she held wrapped in the discarded loincloth, her efforts had not been without reward.

“Look at these,” the wolf-woman said, dropping the bundled loincloth beside the figurines. It fell open to reveal a few more carved pieces of stone. “I need to dry off.”

Plik reached for the first thing that came to hand. A male figure, clad in dress like, but not like that of the Liglimom. He began to dry the stone against his coat, but stopped when his grey and brown hairs stuck to the stone. Instead he reached for a piece of fabric.

Firekeeper returned almost as quickly as she had left, now wrapped in some of the unknown occupant’s bedding. Her hair, hastily toweled off to stop the worst of the dripping, stood out at odd, spiky angles. Plik thought for the first time how odd it was that humans, alone among almost all the beasts, had hair that grew without limit. It certainly did not seem to be a useful trait, and he was glad for his own shaggy coat.

Squatting, Firekeeper picked a small bit of broken stone from the wet heap she had just brought in. “I think this is the head that goes with the other northern body. It is chipped but …”

She fitted head to body, and held the reassembled whole before Blind Seer. The blue-eyed wolf studied it with thoughtful calm. Then, almost as an afterthought, Firekeeper handed the two pieces to Plik.

“A woman in northern attire,” Plik said. “Do either of you know this woman as you did the other?”

Blind Seer replied, “I cannot say I see any resemblance to any we know in that face. The nose is gone for one. But once again there are symbols etched into the base. One is that of House Gyrfalcon, the other that of the land of New Kelvin. There is only one woman I know to whom that pairing would apply.”

“Melina.” Firekeeper’s voice held a flat anger that sealed Plik’s questions behind his teeth. “So I thought. Blind Seer, I do not like this.”

“Nor I,” Blind Seer nosed the heap of stones. “Take these outside and ask Bitter and Lovable if they see anyone they know among those sculpted here.”

Firekeeper glanced at him. “You suspect?”

“I do, but I prefer not to say.”

Firekeeper dropped the sheet where she stood. Apparently, she was dry enough for her comfort.

“I will go,” she said. “Will you stay?”

“Someone should guard Plik.”

Firekeeper nodded. “Well enough. Do not remain in here too long. More and more, I fear this is a place wherein we should not linger.”

Left alone with Blind Seer, Plik asked the questions he had held back until Firekeeper had taken her anger and agitation away with her.

“This Melina … Another northerner you know?”

“Yes. A woman who loved magic too much. She is dead now.”

Plik waited, but no further details were forthcoming. He remembered how the one figure had been broken, the other not.

“But this Queen Valora, she lives?”

“She lives. As far as we know, she lives.”

Plik waited for more, and when nothing came set himself to work. He had bagged almost all the books. With their northern aversion to magic, Firekeeper and Blind Seer had resisted his taking the brazier. The bedding was not interesting. He couldn’t see a use for the basin in the water chamber. Neither the silver block, nor the light panels would come free without damage.

Then he remembered the chandelier in the entryway. Surely they would not care if he took a stone or two from it. Over a century had passed since magic had been practiced, but Plik knew that sometimes an item could retain the signature of the one who had made or used it. A light crystal was a long shot, but better than nothing.

Blind Seer dragged one of the bags of books forward. Pausing and running his tongue around his teeth, he watched as Plik moved a chair over to beneath the chandelier.

“What are you doing?”

“I was going to …” Plik then stopped, realizing something. He removed one of the crystals and held it where the wolf could inspect it. “See anything here?”

Blind Seer sniffed, his ears laying back against his skull, his lips wrinkling back from some very impressive fangs.

“I think I might. These are the same type of stone from which the figurines were made. These pieces are larger, but then they would be.”

Plik was inspecting the fixture. “There are a dozen or so crystals missing, mostly from the upper tier. Firekeeper found, what? Five figurines? Six?”

“About that,” the wolf agreed. “Either there are others, or not all the stonecutter’s hunts came to good ends.”

“I’d bet the latter,” Plik said. “We’ve seen no cutting tools, so he may have had to use what was left to him.”

Given his company, Plik did not say “magic,” but from how Blind Seer’s ears pressed even flatter, the wolf understood.

“We need to take a sample,” Plik said firmly, “and, I think we cannot leave the brazier or the bowl. Those wiser than me in the ways magic was practiced may learn something from them.”

They had both forgotten Powerful Tenderness and Truth, for the pair had waited silently in the exterior darkness. Now Truth spoke.

“There are no omens indicating harm will come to you for doing this,” she said, “but I will be the first to admit that my sight is not what it once was.”

Blind Seer gave a shuddering sigh. “Very well. You will have your way, Plik, but be quick about your collecting.”

Plik was, and when they had taken all away, even Firekeeper’s abandoned loincloth, even the wet bedding, Powerful Tenderness stood out of the doorway. No one was surprised when it closed of its own accord, nor when pale white light rippled across its surface, leaving the silver seamlessly melded into place once again.

“I felt that,” Powerful Tenderness said, stooping to lift Truth. “Old magic, like in an amulet, but this was made to renew itself.”