Wolf Hunting (11 page)

“A great expenditure of power must have gone into that making,” Plik agreed. “I wish I understood better what this place is.”

Truth, passive as a huge toy in Powerful Tenderness’s arms, said softly, “A place for keeping in. A place for keeping out. A place where the worlds meet—worlds that perhaps should not meet.”

But when questioned, the jaguar claimed to have no idea what she had said. With this the throughly unsettled band had to be content.

FIREKEEPER RETURNED shortly after the door had been sealed, young Rascal romping at her heels. She bore the figurines in a bundle at her waist, balancing the weight of her knife.

“I found Bitter and Precious,” she said without preamble. “Our host pack had been hunting, and the ravens stayed to dine. They took time from their meal to examine our finds, though.”

She looked at Blind Seer. “Your suspicions. Were they about the other broken figure?”

Blind Seer huffed breath out through his nose in a whuff of agreement.

“You were right then. Bitter swore the figure was a perfect miniature of Dantarahma. The emblem on his base is that of the junjaldisdu.”

Plik bleated in astonishment. “Dantarahma? But he died but a year ago … . He was the junjaldisdu who …”

“Loved magic too much?” Blind Seer’s hackles rose, but there was humor in the cant of his ears. “As did Melina—who also is shown without a head. Queen Valora, too, had doings with magic, but she trusted unwisely and lost her prizes. Trails cross most often when you near the deer yard. What trail is this?”

Firekeeper shuddered. She removed the bundle from her waist and spread out the figurines, lining them up, matching head to shoulders. Two were broken. Three remained entire. Of these, one was Valora. The other, man and woman, wore a style of clothing like, but, as Plik had said, not the same as that of the Liglimom.

“Bitter and Lovable did not know these two,” she said, tapping the two with the unfamiliar dress. “Moreover, though they have emblems scratched on them, the ravens did not recognize the emblems either. Perhaps I should say ‘emblem.’ It looks much the same on both figures.”

“We could copy the emblem,” Blind Seer suggested. “Plik has a steady hand. If the maimalodalum do not know the symbol, then perhaps one of the Liglimom on the mainland does. We could send a message to Derian.”

Firekeeper emitted a soft inaudible sigh, a mere kiss of breath against her lower lip. Blind Seer was always harrying her to learn to read and write. Indeed, she knew he read better than she did, though neither of them were fluent. However, the wolf had rapidly realized that humans used their written symbols as trail markers, as most of the Beasts used scent and more personal signs.

“You would not ignore where a bear has sharpened his claws on a tree trunk,” Blind Seer had chided her. “Why do you ignore these signs?”

And Firekeeper had refused to reply, for the entire issue awoke uncomfortable stirrings within her. Although she now knew more of her human kin than she ever had before, in a contrary fashion, she still fled from that heritage.

“I have one more figure,” Firekeeper said. “I found it when I went diving, but I kept it back from the others … I needed to think.”

She reached beneath her knife belt and drew forth an uncomfortable lump from where it had pressed against her flesh. She laid it where the firelight would illuminate both its form and its markings.

This sixth figurine was of a jaguar, and from the cant of the head, something in how the figure stood, even in the rosettes of spots so carefully placed, it was clearly not just any jaguar.

It was Truth.

LONG AFTER THE OTHERS HAD STOPPED TALKING and gone to sleep, long after the fires had been banked to coals, Truth sat thinking about everything that had happened these last few hours.

They had told her she had talked to them, had told them how to find her, but she had no memory of this. They had told her how she had moved her body out of the harness, but she had no memory of this either.

Indeed, her body felt strange to her. After perceiving infinity, it seemed limiting to rely on one pair of eyes, one nose, one set of ears, one mouth. Limiting, but comfortable, too. She could trust those impressions, as she could never trust the others. It was a feeling akin to fullness after starvation.

There had been much speculation about what the presence of those six figurines might mean. If the evidence of the four known figurines could be applied to the two unknowns, then clearly they must be images of contemporary people. How they could have been found in an apartment that had apparently been sealed since before the coming of Divine Retribution had been something no one could explain.

That hadn’t kept Powerful Tenderness and Plik in particular from speculating, and Truth had taken some amusement in watching Firekeeper fidget.

That the figurines had been used to focus on individuals seemed evident. Two of those individuals were dead. Though the immediate causes of death were vastly different, the greater cause was frighteningly similar. Both Melina and Dantarahma had investigated the magical arts with more enthusiasm than had been the wont of either of their widely differing peoples. Each had discarded the varying prohibitions of their peoples. Had they been helped to slip the bonds of convention? Had they been prompted to do so? Was the prompter the same as the Voice that had guided Truth?

It seemed all too likely, and Truth was aware that the others held her in some suspicion because of this. Worse, she held herself in suspicion. It was not a good feeling.

Plik had promised he would copy the symbols from the two unknown figurines the next morning. When Firekeeper had protested at the delay, the beast-souled had pointed out that he could not do his best work by firelight. The wolf-woman had subsided. Soon afterward, she and her wolves had gone to run off some of their contained energy.

Truth had heard them singing to the setting moon, their voices mingling with those of the island’s resident pack. She wished she had such easy relief for her worries, but jaguars were solitary creatures. With such solitude she must be content.

PLIK AWOKE TO THE SCENT OF FRYING FISH mingled with that of wet bear. He rose from where he had curled in the long grasses and picked his way to the camp. Powerful Tenderness, still showing traces of having been swimming, was frying fish. A Wise Bear and Wise Sea Otter had joined him. The bear was waiting for the cooking to finish. The otter was eating his share raw.

“These,” Powerful Tenderness said with a toss of his head toward the two yarimaimalom, “along with the local wolves will arrange to refill the trench in front of the silver door.”

“Good,” Plik said, not envying the Wise Beasts their labor—nor their own, should they decide they needed to look into that apartment again. “Even with the silver door resealed, I think that place is not a good thing to leave easy to find.”

“The Wise Beasts agree,” the bear said. “Not only would younglings fall into the trench, but we all fear what might come out.”

“Or what might be drawn here,” the otter agreed. “Magic’s pull is not to be taken lightly. Deep beneath the waves there are said to be fish who lure others into their very maws with false lights. So it is with Magic’s arts. Unlike the northerners, we do not think Magic intrinsically evil—but she is certainly to be avoided by those who cannot understand what they find.”

Plik wondered what the northern wolves would think of this philosophy, but there was no trace of the three wolves. Truth was lolling by the fire. The jaguar, like the otter, had preferred her fish raw, and was eating with messy enthusiasm.

“Taste,” the jaguar said by way of greeting. “That I do enjoy having back again. I had almost forgotten how good it is to taste.”

“I’m glad you have found something to enjoy,” Plik said. He rummaged in the packs until he found his drawing materials. “Where are the figurines?”

“Firekeeper has them,” Truth said, “all but the two. Those she left for you to copy.”

She tossed her head, spraying the area with little bits of torn fish and glittering scale, indicating a small bundle neatly tied to a tree limb.

Plik wondered if Firekeeper didn’t trust them with the rest of the figurines, or if she was merely possessive. Probably a little of both. After all, she was human, and there was no race ever—not even squirrels and ravens—who so enjoyed collecting useless things.

And she has only scant reason to trust us,
Plik thought, forcing himself to be fair.
She is an outsider wherever she goes. I thought I knew something of that state, but compared to Firekeeper
…

He let the thought drift, and ambled over to a sapling whose succulent young growth promised a good meal. Between bites, he sketched the emblems etched onto the bases of the figurines. They were essentially the same: roughly triangular, with another triangle set within. The edges of both triangles were repeatedly broken into curving lines that rose upward to new points. Somehow they suggested flame.

Plik shivered. Among the five elements, the most unpredictable—even more so than Magic—was Fire.

The flame/triangle within a flame/triangle did not seem in the least familiar to Plik. He wondered if this was because it was very old—or perhaps very new.

The wolves arrived soon after Plik had finished his drawings, making the raccoon-man suspect that Firekeeper had convinced Lovable, who was easily bribed with trinkets, to stand watch. Blind Seer and Rascal could be of little help, but Firekeeper applied herself with unwonted eagerness to assisting Plik and Powerful Tenderness assemble their gear. She even helped Powerful Tenderness hoist the heavy pack to his shoulders—not that he needed her assistance.

The drawings were sent ahead, carried by Bitter, then the travelers took their leave of the house that was no longer a house. Behind them was the scent of fresh dirt as the bear set about filling the trench. Plik knew that before the night fell there would be little trace of their hard labor—but of their discovery there was much evidence, some of it carried in his own, small pack. Bearing mystery—and perhaps Magic—Plik hurried on the trail back to Center Island.

HOPE SHOOK HER HEAD. “We have spent the last several days since Bitter brought your message researching those two symbols, and although there are ones like them in our archives, we can find none that are the same.”

Firekeeper tilted her head to one side in unconscious mimicry of the way the wolves expressed a question.

“You say there are symbols similar to these in your archives,” she said. “How like?”

Hope gestured toward sheets of vellum. “I could show you, if you wish. The problem is this: Even a similarity does not mean a relation. Can you understand?”

Firekeeper thought of the two symbols Plik had drawn, and realized that she did.

“It is like scents, is it not? All wolves smell like wolves, but no two wolves smell alike. Moreover, one could not tell a Wise Wolf from a Royal Wolf without more than scent to go on.”

Hope gave a little bird-like chirp. “Very good, though not being as nose-driven as you wolves are, I would not have put it that way.”

“Among my people,” Firekeeper said, almost in apology, glancing to where Blind Seer reclined at her side studying the symbols as if he were memorizing them, “I am nose-dead, but still …”

They were seated within the Tower of Air, which housed the communal archives of the maimalodalum. Plik waited to one side. His contained bearing held some complex of emotions Firekeeper could not quite identify, for though the Royal Beasts included raccoons, her contact with them had been limited. Like jaguars, they were not social except with their own kits. That Plik’s body combined human and raccoon traits only confused the matter. Of one thing she felt certain: The normally affable maimalodalu was tense and nervous.

When Plik spoke, Firekeeper listened carefully, seeking to garner every bit of meaning she could—both from what he said and what he did not.

“So, now that our resources are exhausted, do we turn this over to the humans on the mainland?”

Hope gave a crisp nod. “I think so. Not only do they have texts we do not, they have contact with peoples we do not. It may be that they will be able to recognize the manner of clothing worn by those two.”

Firekeeper noted with fascination that Plik had lowered his head slightly—protecting his throat. She did not think he meant to attack, more that his action was after the fashion of the growls that would rumble in a wolf’s belly when the wolf wished to express displeasure.

“And,” Plik said, “from there?”

“It depends,” said Hope, “on what we learn.”

“Precise action does,” Plik said, “but surely it is time and enough to discuss what all of us must see …”

“See?”

Firekeeper thought that Hope was being deliberately obtuse, but she recognized this tactic. She had seen it used before by leaders who needed to draw forth their followers. Annoying as it was, it was often the mark of a good leader, for only bad leaders thought they knew all there was to know.

Plik glared at the bird-woman. “Shall I spell it out then?”

“Doc.”

“Six figurines. Two were known to have attempted to use magic. These are dead. One might have used magic—this Valora—but for lost opportunity. Truth … Truth is harder to place, but I see her as a link to the others. They were used as she was used.”

“By the Voice of which she spoke?” Hope asked helpfully.

“Precisely.”

“Go on.”

Blind Seer spoke for Plik. “Two others may remain out there—alive. Two others who this Voice has touched. Two others who may be toying with things wise creatures know are dangerous.”

Firekeeper nodded. “You beast-souled have better reason than we to know what magic misused can do—and we all know too well what the price is for that use.”

“Blood,” Hope said. “Yes. Our people know that. The Liglimom long ago banned such among their own peoples. We share your fear of Magic, but we respect her. Our great difference is that your people thought that by ignoring Magic you could make her go away. We did not.”