Wolf Hunting (45 page)

“I’ll hold this while someone forces the door,” Harjeedian said, glancing over at Truth.

The jaguar’s ears flattened momentarily; then Firekeeper spoke in what Derian was coming to think of as her “Truth voice.” It was slightly higher than Firekeeper’s own, and touched with the faintest hint of a feline whine.

“That would be best. Those who created it would have had a means of ‘hanging it up,’ but we don’t know how, and the Meddler says there is risk we will set off the alarm if we try.”

So Harjeedian stood there, holding his hands up rather awkwardly, and Derian bent under the nearly invisible barrier.

“The door isn’t that good,” he said. “I’ll get rid of this outer planking, then …”

“Then” proved to be Firekeeper getting impatient and bursting the door open with her shoulder to the wood. The lock wasn’t strong, and snapped at the pressure. Then, one by one, they filed inside. Harjeedian came last and lowered the camouflage carefully back into place.

Derian had lit a lantern, but it wasn’t all that necessary. Light seeped in where the shutters had warped. Above, the ceilings bulged where water had leaked in and ruined the plaster. Bits of debris were everywhere, with a few promising traffic patterns from other rooms into this one breaking the clutter of sawdust, leaf litter, and less definable trash.

“The floor’s solid,” Derian said, thumping his boot heel on flagstone. “This looks like a winter kitchen. It’s probably built right on the ground with maybe a root cellar beneath. Which way do we go from here?”

Blind Seer and Truth were sniffing the various paths.

Blind Seer raised his head, and Firekeeper said, using a voice a touch deeper than her own and even huskier, “Humans have been here. More than two. There is the Herb Man I scented on the doorstep, but I have a woman who smells of smoking weed, and three or four others.”

“Old scents or new?” Firekeeper asked, then shifted her voice to translate the exchange that followed.

“Mostly old, but months old, not years, certainly not since the Plague. One or two, maybe days.”

Truth added, “And beneath the humans, the older scent of terrified beasts remains. Bear and wolf, jaguar and puma, deer and boar. Many, many came through here, and not a one was unafraid.”

“I have Plik’s scent!” Blind Seer announced triumphantly. “He must have been being carried, but here someone set him down.”

“He was alive?” Harjeedian asked.

“He did not smell dead,” Blind Seer reported. “It is a brief trace, so he must have been lifted again.”

Derian hadn’t been precisely relaxed when they came into this place, but Truth’s continual mention of fear made it somehow important to him that he not seem so.

“So which way?” he asked again. “Even I can see there are several trails. Is there one where Plik’s scent shows up?”

“No,” Blind Seer replied.

“One trail runs deepest,” Firekeeper said, although in truth the floor showed no grooving. “Broader” might have been more accurate, but Derian really didn’t feel like correcting the wolf-woman’s language skills just now.

“Shall we go that way?” Derian said, and when no one protested, he lifted his lantern and followed Firekeeper and Blind Seer into the depths of the twilit stronghold.

He felt a touch upon his shoulder as he did so, and discovered Lovable perched there. The weight unbalanced him slightly, but Derian found himself strangely comforted.

FIREKEEPER WAS GLAD that the floor below her feet remained solid stone. She had some bad memories of floors in old buildings falling away beneath her feet This floor, though, was sound. Enough light drifted in from odd areas that she could see her way, and with Blind Seer beside her, that seemed enough. The main corridor was wide, with somewhat narrower ones branching off of it, but she did not let herself be distracted.

“All the beast scent trails go down this wide way
,” Blind Seer said,
“and many of the humans as well
.
Smoke Woman and Smelly Herb Man came back and forth many times. I also scent the blood briar.”

Firekeeper didn’t bother to translate. She was frankly tired of being the voice for so many. Indeed, she was glad for Lovable’s unwonted silence. Perhaps the raven missed her mate, worried at leaving him alone with only Eshinarvash for protection. Certainly, Firekeeper might have been tempted were the choice hers to stay where she could guard and protect a loved one or go on and fight.

But you have done otherwise
, a voice said, and she could not honestly tell if it was her own thoughts or the prompting of the Meddler.

“Outer air,”
Blind Seer said, a moment before Firekeeper caught the fresh scent herself.
“This trail leads outside.”

Firekeeper reported this development, and Harjeedian said, “Many of these strongholds had an inner courtyard. We may find another well there. We walked around the house and saw no gate leading in. What would bring anyone here—and apparently regularly enough that they have worn a visible trail in the dust and debris?”

“We find out,” Firekeeper said, halting in front of a heavy door. “This one is not locked. Truth, does it show that spiderweb?”

The Wise Jaguar studied for a moment then said,
“I see
nothing, and the Meddler assures me there is nothing there. Whoever cut this trail must have felt that their way was secure
.”

Firekeeper translated, and Derian said, “Secure at least from someone entering undetected. Without Truth, we would have tripped two warnings: one at the copse’s edge, and one at the door.”

“The other doors are probably warded as well,” Harjeedian said.

Firekeeper listened while she inspected how the door opened. She was actually coming to like human prattle. It was rather sweet how they kept trying to give reason to a situation that was only reasonable in its very unreasonableness.

“I can open,” she said, “easily.”

She did so without further delay.

The weight of the door and its iron bindings further testified that it was meant to secure the stronghold’s interior from wind and weather—as well as against possible uninvited guests. However, the door did not stick nor did the hinges creak when she pushed against it.

“Someone has kept it oiled,” Harjeedian said, “and mended the upper hinge. You can see where the fresh metal doesn’t match.”

Firekeeper stepped through the open door, Blind Seer pacing her. The portal could have admitted the two of them and Truth as well without crowding, and she wondered why. Exterior doors were often wide so that furniture and other large items could be accommodated, but she had noticed that interior doors were almost invariably narrower. This door was, if anything, wider than the one through which they had entered the house.

But she did not let such musings distract her. Even her dead nose caught the sour scent of the blood briar here, and with it a trace of blood. She found her hand drifting to the hilt of her Fang, and didn’t stop herself.

Yet the area they stepped into was a rather pleasant place: an airy, rectangular garden, nearly as wide as the stronghold itself. The well Harjeedian had promised was there, and many feral plants reseeded from their domestic progenitors. Growing from the mold was a young apple tree heavy with russet fruit, doubtless thriving from its elder’s death. Grapevines mingling with honeysuckle had claimed one wall.

Oddly, though Firekeeper looked carefully, in all this tangle there was no trace of the blood briar. She found one hank of briar vine holding a cluster of dry leaves, but this was all.

This was in the center of the courtyard. Here weeds pushed through the gaps between the flagstone paving, but interestingly all the weeds but those at the farthest edges had been beaten down by what must have been fairly frequent traffic.

The path through the wild growth that showed the most foot wear was not the one leading to the well, nor the one to the smoothly polished granite bench near the apple tree. The path worn most deeply headed toward what was in all appearances a solid wall overgrown with some sort of innocuous ornamental vine.

The vine’s flowers were vaguely familiar to Firekeeper. She thought she might have seen them in the castle garden in Eagle’s Nest. These had mostly gone to seed, each seed tipped with a tiny bit of vegetable down meant to carry it away on the wind.

“Clematis,” Harjeedian said, surprising them all. “Why would they go to all this trouble to look at a wall covered with clematis?”

Blind Seer and Truth were reading the ground and air, but Firekeeper ignored their muttered comments to motion the others closer.

“Look,” she said, “the wall is not all covered. There is a place in the center that is strangely open.”

“The shape is rather like an arched doorway,” Derian said. “A few vines drape over it, but they never touch the wall.”

“And at least one has been broken,” Harjeedian said, “as if someone tall walked into it.”

He moved closer and inspected the edges of the vines. “Others of these have been cut as well. This is no chance clearing.”

“It’s a secret door,” Derian said, his voice quickening with excitement. “Perhaps to a treasure vault or a hideaway.”

“And the twins are in that hideaway,” Harjeedian said, “and Plik with them.”

Firekeeper was moving forward to see if she could discover how this door opened when Truth’s voice froze her in midstep.

“It is a door
,” Truth said, and her ears were flat against her skull,
“or rather a gate, a magical portal between this place and somewhere else
.”

“DID YOU KNOW?” Truth snarled at the Meddler within the safety of her skull. “Did you know and lead us here as the others were led to your temple on Misheemnekuru?”

“You are always so ready to think the worst of me,” the Meddler replied. “But, no, I didn’t know. I spoke honestly when I said that I had no idea what was within the copse.”

“You had looked into it before,” Truth persisted, “when your precious twins first came here.”

“At that time I could see little that they didn’t see with their own eyes,” the Meddler replied. “And they had not passed through this door. They had barely penetrated the interior of the house, for that matter, and were quite occupied in figuring out if they could last the winter, or whether they must return to Gak with their tails held low.”

“But you knew what that opening was as soon as my gaze rested upon it,” Truth said.

“As you would know a snapping turtle by the lumpiness of its shell,” the Meddler replied. “These gates were not everywhere, but they were common enough, at least to one such as I who practiced the magical arts.”

Truth replied with a growl that held such unameliorated menace that her companions all turned and looked at her as if they expected her to pounce upon one of them.

And why should they not?
Truth thought in the part of her mind quite safe—she hoped—from the Meddler’s intrusion. She had agreed to let him use her eyes and talk inside her head, but had drawn a firm line at anything else.
After all, I have been mad in the past.

Certainly her current habit of consulting a Meddler who was not visible to any of them had to seem a bit unsettling. It helped that they all had evidence that he existed, which was at least one reason, she was sure, that he had exhausted himself to show himself to them. He had others, she was certain. A creature like the Meddler would never have only one reason for anything.

“Can you tell us how to use this gate?” Truth asked.

“In general, yes. In specific, though, I’m afraid not. And before you get all suspicious and start questioning my motives tell me … Wait, you’re familiar with door locks, right?”

“I am.”

“Good. The problem with any form of portal, from the hole into a rabbit’s burrow to the most elaborate magical gate, is that while it lets the creature that created it go in and out, others could use it as well. I can’t tell much about this particular gate just from looking at it through your eyes, but I can tell you a few things.”

“Please do.”

“My guess is that this gate will only take those who pass through it to one place. I also suspect it will be nearly impossible for you or your companions to open this gate from this end. These gates were routinely locked, and without the proper key they could not be opened.”

“Is this key something we might duplicate?”

“I doubt it. Usually some minor ritual would be involved. The chances that you would stumble upon the correct combination of words or gestures is minimal.”

“But we must go after Plik. The scent trail ends here.”

“You may need to wait until those who carried him away return.”

“If,” Truth said somberly, “they return. Let me tell the others what you have said. They will not be pleased.”

“Say what you will. I will do some scouting on my own.”

Truth explained what the Meddler had said about magical gates, doing her best to answer questions for which she did not really have the answers. A moment came when humans and beasts alike looked at each other, and each one showed some element of despair.

“We’ve come so far,” Harjeedian said, “since Firekeeper first brought word of the Meddler’s machinations. I cannot believe we are to be stopped here. There must be something we can do.”

Firekeeper tossed the core of the apple she had been eating at the clematis-framed section of wall. It hit hard, leaving wet pulp against the stone.

“We only have the Meddler’s word this is a gate. Maybe it not. Maybe it is like Derian say.”

Truth wished this were so, but she knew the Meddler had not lied—not in this, at least.

“The Meddler spoke honestly about this,” she said. “Think. It matches what we have already sensed. Where are the twins? Where are those many beasts whose scents layer the floors?”

“From where,” Blind Seer added, “came those other humans we scented? Truth is right, sweet Firekeeper, we cannot waste energy hunting a trail where we would like it to run. We must follow where it goes.”