Wolf Hunting (47 page)

“Did …” he asked, his voice rasping dry, “blood briars cause this?”

Isende worried her lower lip between her teeth. She said something to the doctor, presumably translating Plik’s question. He had been turning to leave, but now he stopped. He stroked his square chin as a bearded man might a beard, and said something. Then, with a distantly courteous nod to Plik, then another to Tiniel and Isende, he left.

Plik stared at the twins, knowing they would not have forgotten his question. Tiniel took it upon himself to answer.

“You have what the doctor would call ‘burning down the wick,’ if I were to give the words their literal translation. The people of Liglim call this disease by a name you may recognize. They call it Divine Retribution.”

Plik gaped, unable to make a sound, and Isende spooned water into his mouth. He swallowed automatically, and though he suspected the water was room temperature, it felt wonderfully cool and soothing.

“How?” he whispered.

Tiniel sat on the foot of the bed, his fingers folding back and forth a section of the coverlet. Isende reached out and patted her brother’s hand, then gave Plik a brave smile.

“How? How did you catch it? How do we know? Well, let me start with something you should know first. It doesn’t seem like the disease is as deadly as it once was. The doctor is right in warning you this is a dangerous illness. You could die, but if we’re careful, you’ll live.”

Tiniel said in a tight voice, “We had it. Both of us. We’re alive. The doctor had it, too.”

Isende frowned at her brother as if his words held some information other than the simple meaning Plik heard. Tiniel subsided back to folding and unfolding the edge of the coverlet, and Isende continued speaking.

“If we’re to believe the stories from the New World, the disease … Let me just call it by its name in the doctor’s language. It isn’t as creepy as calling it ‘Divine Retribution.’ In the doctor’s language it’s called ‘querinalo.’”

Plik nodded carefully to show he understood. He also indicated the water. When Isende resumed talking, she fed him delicately measured spoonfuls. Plik wished he could just have a cup, but he wasn’t sure he could lift one.

“The stories we were told,” Isende said, “and I think you must have been told—and everyone in the New World knows by heart—tell how querinalo came and those who had magic of any sort became very ill and died. Those with moderate magics took longer to get ill. We were told that many of these escaped back to the Old World, so we don’t know if they lived or died. In the New World, anyone with a talent sickened and some of these died, but not all. Is that about what you know?”

Plik nodded.

“Good. Now, one thing we of the New World have always wondered is what happened to the Old World rulers, the people who started all these colonies. Some people thought they fled querinalo and feared to come back. Most thought that querinalo must have spread to the Old World, too, because the Old World rulers have never come back and it seemed unlikely that they would have waited more than a hundred years to do so if they could.”

Plik felt question after question rising to be asked, but his sore and swollen throat made it necessary that he wait and listen, hoping Isende would anticipate his questions in the course of her tale.

“The Old World rulers haven’t come back, in case you’re wondering,” she said, perhaps in response to a little squeak that had slipped out “That’s an entirely other story …”

“Finish telling Plik about querinalo,” Tiniel said. “He needs to know.”

Isende looked as if she might rebel. Then an expression that strangely mingled anger and pity warmed her brown eyes and she nodded.

“Very well. As I said earlier, it seems as if querinalo isn’t as severe as it used to be. People live through it now, but rarely without serious damage either to body or—more usually—to, well, remember the doctor’s name for the disease? ‘Burning down the wick’?”

Plik nodded, feeling every bone and muscle ache at the effort.

“His people called it that because they realized that magical ability was the thing the disease fed on—like the flame of a candle centers on the wick. They believed that once the disease destroyed that wick, then it began to diminish, unable to tap into the rest of the victim’s strength. That’s why those with just talents tended to survive—though often with the talent reduced or lost altogether. Talents are minor magics, hardly more than an extra sense. Major magics, those that can be trained or adapted to multiple uses, those are really intertwined with all parts of the person. If querinalo runs its course, it bums out the person’s magical ability. Usually, that ability doesn’t return or if it does, it’s diminished.”

Tiniel interrupted, his words rushing out as if they had been dammed behind his breath.

“That’s what happened to Isende and me. If you came searching for us, you must have learned something about us first, about how from when we were small we were aware of each other in a way no other people were.”

He raised his hand and revealed the small white scar along the outer edge. “We were connected at birth. Even after that physical bond was severed, we remained connected. The connection changed and altered as we grew, but it was always there. Then we caught querinalo, and when we recovered the connection was gone. Isende doesn’t like calling the disease Divine Retribution, but I wonder, I wonder! We had something special. I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted …”

Isende glowered at her twin and Tiniel halted in mid-phrase, gulping breath. When Tiniel continued, his voice reminded Plik of a horse under tight rein.

“I wanted to add to it I thought my ambition gave us the right to investigate, to probe our heritage. When Gak refused to name us a clan—although I still think the right was ours—I came up with this idea. Come here. Find our heritage. Find something … I wanted to go back and show them … show them that they were wrong to dismiss us as minor members of a vast clan. Isende didn’t care how the others felt about us. At least she didn’t care as much as I did. Now look what we’ve done!”

Plik stared at Tiniel, half certain this outburst was another of his own feverish hallucinations. Then he felt Isende’s hand—still automatically feeding him water—tremble, felt the water splash onto his fur, and knew that this was no hallucination.

I should have known,
Plik thought.
They behaved so normally. They summoned each other by voice or gesture. There was no special link between them. They were close
,
true
,
but no closer than would be usual for two people who had dwelled together all their lives. The very normalcy of the situation hid its significance from me
.
But for them
,
poor children, for them there is nothing normal in this lack of connection
.
It is as if they have lost speech or hearing. They are crippled for life
,
and Tiniel blames his ambition for this injury
,
and for … I am sure there is something more
.
I must have the rest of the tale
.

Plik waited until fresh water had washed his throat, then croaked, “Where? Who?”

Unlike when he had asked this a few days before, Isende no longer pretended not to completely understand.

“Plik, we’re in the Old World. The doctor you saw, the others you said you smelled—they’re residents of the Old World.”

“Worse,” Tiniel said, his self-loathing making him blunt “Worse than residents. They’re Old World sorcerers. Now, for the first time in over a hundred years, they have a route to the New World—and it’s my fault that they do.”

“Oh, stop it!” Isende snapped at her brother. “That’s your problem, always taking too much on yourself, assuming others feel as you do. They were already here, trying to make the gates work. Maybe we sped things along but …”

Plik reached out and tapped her arm. Immediately Isende softened.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve spilled water all over you, and you’ve a fever, and our shouting must make your head ache. Do you want me to let you rest?”

Plik shook his head. “Tell more,” he whispered. He wished he could tell them about the Meddler. Maybe knowing how that being had pressed the impulse that had fired the twins’ exploration would soothe some of Tiniel’s guilt, but telling them about the Meddler would have to wait until he could speak more clearly.

Isende put her hand to Plik’s forehead. “If Tiniel would get some cool compresses, then I will continue talking. By the way, Zebel, that’s the doctor, told us water alone—no food—is best for you at this stage of the illness. Food will just feed the fever, give it fuel to bum hotter. He says you’re rather fat, so you can do without eating for a day or two.”

Plik tried to smile. He didn’t feel in the least hungry, but he could tell that Isende was troubled at having to deny him food.

“Tell,” he whispered.

Tiniel brought cool compresses and put them at points where Plik’s fur was thinner. forehead, wrists, feet. They felt very good. Plik let himself drift away from the discomfort of his body, but kept himself firmly anchored with the thread of the tale Isende began to unfold.

“We came to our ancestors’ stronghold,” she said, “for pretty much the reasons Tiniel mentioned—except that he forgot to mention how terribly lost we felt when our father died. Our father was the last person who didn’t think of us as very strange—or at least that was how we felt at the time. We came out here, and really it was sort of a relief having to work hard to establish ourselves. We didn’t have energy left to tear ourselves up with grief. We mourned, but we didn’t mope.

“After we became acquainted with some of the local yarimaimalom, we even began to have some hope we could make our venture work. They spared us a lot of searching for things we needed. They showed us where old orchards were, for example, brought us meat. In return we made clear we wouldn’t set up pit traps or snares that might hurt any of them. We weren’t quite friends with them, but I think we might have become so in time.

“When winter came we couldn’t roam as much. We had moved into the stronghold by then, so we had a good roof and solid walls to keep out the weather. We’d stocked up on food. There was ample water. Useless old furniture gave us more firewood than we could burn in five winters. At last we started investigating the heritage our father had told us about. We’d located the library early on. While we’d pulled out bits and pieces of documents, we hadn’t really searched systematically. Now we did.

“That’s when we realized that this place had been more than the residence of a sorcerous family. It had housed an important magical artifact—a gate for traveling between the New World and the Old. I wasn’t joking when I told you before that we’re in the Old World. We are, and we came here by means of that gate.

“Remember all the stories about how the Old World sorcerers took to their ships and fled when querinalo spread? Didn’t it ever seem strange to you that they managed so organized a retreat, and managed to get so much of their stuff away with them?”

Plik rocked his head side to side, trying to indicate he hadn’t really ever thought about it.

“I did,” Isende said, “not because I was terribly practical or anything, but because I kept hoping that someday I’d stumble on a hidden treasure—gems and gold and beautiful jewelry, not magical artifacts—that the sorcerers couldn’t get away in time. One of our nursemaids when we were little was full of stories like that, and when she moved on I made up new ones for myself and Tiniel.”

Tiniel sighed in fond exasperation. “You’ve gone off again,’Sende. Plik doesn’t want to hear about our childhood games.”

Actually, Plik didn’t mind, but he did want to know how the twins had managed to get themselves from a dilapidated stronghold in the western foothills into the Old Country.

Isende stuck her tongue out at her brother, but she did resume the main point of her narrative.

“According to what we learned—both then and since—there weren’t a great many of these gates between the Old and New Worlds. Apparently, they are very, very difficult to construct. However, back then the sorcerers were growing weary of long sea voyages. Their initial desire to keep all the secrets of greater magic from the New World was ebbing in their desire to travel more easily. A compromise was reached. A few gates were constructed in semi-isolated areas like this one. In order to keep those who didn’t like the idea at all at least somewhat appeased, the gates all opened to one place, a central nexus.

“This nexus already existed, and was one of the most highly protected and guarded and otherwise watched-over places in the Old World. It didn’t belong to any one nation, but was a neutral space. I can’t say I understand all the reasons, but they had something to do with not wanting rivals to be able to use gates to attack each other, or to march armies through and all.

“When all the parties involved—and don’t ask me who they were because I don’t really know—finally agreed that there would be gates made between the Old and New Worlds, they also agreed that the gates would arrive in the Old World at a new complex attached to the existing nexus. That way they could be protected from abuse along with all the rest. And when querinalo came, well, who would take a long sea voyage when they could use a gate? And the sick came through the gates and brought querinalo with them.”

Tiniel interrupted. “Some think querinalo was already here. That it started here, and that the gates spread it the other way—back to the New World.”

Isende sighed at him, and Plik wondered if they had disagreed this much when they were still linked. If so, there must have been a huge number of barely audible arguments.

“Tiniel has a point,” she said, “but wherever querinalo began, what’s important is that the gates helped it to spread more quickly. And the gates made possible the removal from the New World many artifacts and valuable texts—not to mention more mundane valuables—that would otherwise have been left behind.”

Although
, Plik thought,
if the tales I heard were true, this wouldn’t have mattered much. Between the remaining humans and the Beasts, very little that even faintly resembled an artifact was permitted to survive. Magic was too much feared and hated.