Wolf Hunting (8 page)

Sometimes, they created monsters.

IV

FIREKEEPER DECIDED SHE DID NOT LIKE POLISHING silver one bit. Even after Bitter returned from Center Island bearing with him a compound that made the task easier, the job remained filthy, repetitive, and boring.

However, neither Blind Seer nor Rascal could help, for they lacked hands. Plik and Powerful Tenderness took turns, but there was room for only two at a time in the trench. Worse, Firekeeper was the only one supple enough to polish the lower portions of the silver door. As everyone—even she—had agreed that a wholly polished surface was probably necessary, she could not slip away and leave the work to others.

So she polished. That night, while she was trying to wash away the scent of tarnished metal in the cool waters of the bay, she wondered if the moon so high above was laughing at her.

When they were not taking a turn polishing, Plik and Powerful Tenderness experimented with a variety of mirrors, seeing which caught light best, learning how to cup the glow and send it elsewhere. Later, when Lovable returned from Center Island bearing a small sack of polished lenses, they worked on using these rounded pieces of glass to intensify the light.

By the night of the full moon, the two maimalodalum had worked out some possible ways to reflect moonlight “Back, then back, then back, then back,” as the verse demanded. Firekeeper had her own ideas about what might be needed, but she kept these to herself, not sharing them even with Blind Seer. Magic made her uncomfortable, and her growing understanding of how the art might have worked made her even more so.

On the night of the full moon, they gathered in the vicinity of the door. The fill dirt that remained in the cellar had settled now, the edges tamped down and shored up so they were less likely to cave in. Powerful Tenderness and Plik were down in the trench. Firekeeper waited above, standing on the packed dirt. Truth, still leashed and harnessed, sat beside her. The jaguar had needed to be carried to her position, her body as limp as that of a doll and nearly as lifeless.

Blind Seer and Rascal flanked the edges of the excavation, ready if needed to spring on Truth, or chase down anything that might get away from the pair of beast-souled and into the night. No one really expected any trouble of the sort, though. The oral history they had gathered from the Wise Beasts agreed that the building that had once been here had been razed before Divine Retribution had driven away the Old Country rulers. If anything alive had been imprisoned behind the silver door, it was unlikely that it had survived well over a hundred years.

PLIK CRANED HIS NECK BACK so he could watch as the moon rose. Last night and the night before they had calculated the arc it would travel through the sky, and he knew exactly when its light—faint and diffuse as it was—would touch the mirror. They would have plenty of time to try their various experiments, and then, if none of them worked, well, the moon would be nearly as full on the next night. They could try again.

Plik held the lenses that he and Powerful Tenderness hoped would help with the repeated channeling of the light. The mirror Powerful Tenderness held was an artifact taken from the Tower of Magic before it had fallen. As far as any had been able to tell, there was nothing magical about it, but they had all thought it was best to use something once dedicated to Magic for this task.

“All” was perhaps not the best way to think of it. He and Powerful Tenderness had agreed that this was the best course of action. Through messages relayed by the now weary-winged Bitter and Lovable, they had the concurrence of the majority of the beast-souled as well. None of them were happy about the need to work with magic, but it seemed necessary.

Firekeeper and Blind Seer had refused to offer any contribution to the process, stating that they knew little about magic. Plik thought the two Royal Beasts were being stubborn and deliberately obstructionist. The lore and traditions that governed magic might have been all but destroyed in their homeland, but he had gathered they had learned something of magical lore in New Kelvin.

However, although Plik had worked day after day beside Firekeeper, he could not say he understood her. He would find himself chatting comfortably with her and Powerful Tenderness, then his tongue would dry as he found himself groping for some idea or concept to bridge the gap between her youth and his age, her wolfish outlook and his own shaped by a life spent as both part of a community and yet ever a little apart.

Blind Seer paced nervously through a narrow route that kept him within his assigned duty station. His hackles were slightly raised, his head up, every line of his greyfurred body alert with tension. Firekeeper was more still, but she too showed tense alertness. Even Rascal, normally mischievous as most young things are when they start feeling their strength, was unduly quiet. The awareness that he was the only thing between the darkness and some unnamed horror had clearly weighed the young wolf down as nothing else had managed to do.

“Here comes Lady Moon,” Powerful Tenderness said softly.

He looked at Plik, who replied with a faint nod. They had both agreed that reciting aloud any of the litanies to the Moon, or to Magic, the Child of Water, granddaughter of the Creator Deities, would only make their foreign allies edgy, but they had privately agreed to recite them in their hearts. Prayer could only help appease Magic’s darker mood.

Earlier, Powerful Tenderness had drawn aside young Rascal and asked the wolf if he would do the same. The Wise Beasts, unlike their Royal counterparts, shared the religion that was practiced by Beasts and humans alike in this region. Rascal had agreed, and doubtless some of his nervousness was due to this dual role demanded of him. Wolves were interesting, and made good allies and worse enemies, but they were not terribly complex.

Now Powerful Tenderness stretched to catch the moonlight in the mirror. Plik felt a flicker of hope. Against all reason, the moonlight did seem to reflect back, but hope died almost as soon as it had arisen. That pale reflection was not sufficient to touch the silver door, much less be repeatedly relayed.

“We have failed,” he said, lowering his own useless tools.

Reassurance came from an unlikely quarter. Firekeeper’s husky voice broke the silence.

“Try again. The moon is higher now. Listen. The island’s pack is singing to her. Perhaps she will hear us if we join them.”

In example, Firekeeper raised her head and howled, a clear sound whose rise and fall made the hairs on Plik’s body rise. Blind Seer and Rascal made a chorus of that single howl, and after a slight hesitation, Powerful Tenderness added his own guttural note.

Plik tried a howl or two, but the sounds he made were less than commanding, so he fell silent, listening. The distant howls of the resident pack mingled their notes into the concert, and Plik’s sensitive ears caught more distant notes from the next island.

He also “heard” a faint and tenuous vibration that made him wonder if the moon had indeed heard the wolves’ call. Perhaps Powerful Tenderness also heard this sound that was not a sound, for he raised the polished mirror toward the moonlight with renewed confidence.

Did the reflected moonlight seem brighter? Plik wasn’t certain. He glanced up at the moon to try and gauge differences in intensity. So it was that he witnessed Firekeeper doing something very odd.

She had raised herself onto her left knee, her right leg crooked as if she was about to push herself upward into a standing position. Swiftly, she drew her hunting knife from its sheath. The cabochon-cut garnet in the hilt glinted as it caught the moonlight; then Firekeeper made a horizontal slashing motion against her right leg and blood beaded, then flowed, from the cut.

Firekeeper cupped her free hand to gather the blood, then tossed the liquid forward so it splattered against both the mirror in Powerful Tenderness’s hand and the silver door. A few droplets touched Plik’s fur as well, and he felt sickened.

Firekeeper caught a bit more blood, and again tossed it to land upon mirror and door. Then she pulled a bit of cloth from her waistband and bound her cut thigh with swift efficiency. Lastly, she cleaned both sides of her knife blade against the cloth and dropped the weapon into its sheath.

The entire process took no more than three or four easy breaths, and Plik was too shocked to make a sound. Blind Seer must have caught the scent of his partner’s blood in the air, for his howling faltered, and would have ceased but that Firekeeper shouted:

“No! Keep singing. Look!”

She gestured toward the mirror that Powerful Tenderness held. Not the faintest doubt remained that the reflected moonlight had become brighter, coalescing and contracting, seeming to focus on the beads of blood—or did the blood focus on the moonlight?

Plik “heard” the faint vibration of magic intensify, becoming a single note that echoed the wolves’ song. The silvery light shot forth, and would have been swallowed by the sky, but Powerful Tenderness had recovered his composure and directed the beam toward the silver door. The light hit the mirror-bright surface and suddenly the entirety was illuminated, making the surrounding area brighten as if an oil-soaked pyre had burst into cold flame.

The blaze of light made Plik’s eyes shut, but he forced them open despite the searing pain. In the new illumination he saw the beam from the mirror angling toward the sky as Powerful Tenderness shied away from the radiance. Plik leapt, scrabbling half up Powerful Tenderness as he might the trunk of a tree. He seized hold of Powerful Tenderness’s arm and pulled the mirror back into alignment with the silver door.

Plik saw now what must be done. When the mirror slipped from Powerful Tenderness’s grasp, he seized it. He caught the light that bounced from the silver door, channeled it back again, running the brilliance along the door’s edge, catching it again, and sending it back until the door’s edges had all been unbound.

The light failed with the opening of the last seam, and the door swung open into absolute darkness.

A shrill scream came from where Truth waited on top of the fill-dirt mound. For the first time in days, the jaguar moved with purpose and volition. She leapt into the pit, once again leaving leash and harness behind her.

Firekeeper leapt after, landing clumsily on her newly cut leg. There was a blur of grey as Blind Seer followed her.

Plik was suddenly aware that the howling had ceased, not just that of the three proximate wolves, but elsewhere as well. It left the surrounding area eerily silent. Even the insects and frogs made no noise. Even the waves lapping the beach seemed to do so tentatively, so as not to draw attention to themselves with their grumble and hiss.

Plik realized that the hum of magic that had vibrated his bones a moment before had died with the brilliant light.

“Aren’t we going after them?” Rascal said pleadingly, and for the first time Plik realized that the young wolf had been trying to push past, but that he and Powerful Tenderness had unconsciously moved to block the now open door.

“I think we wait,” Powerful Tenderness said. “Someone must remain to guard and to keep the door open so they may return.”

“Or,” added Plik, feeling a tremble of apprehension at the thought, “in case such comes forth that we must close and hold this door forever sealed.”

ALTHOUH STILL REELING WITH SHOCK that she had been right—that blood and not mere tools would be needed to unseal the silver door—Firekeeper did not fail to feel Truth surging to her paws and gathering to leap through the now open door.

Firekeeper had expected something of the sort if they did indeed manage to open the door, and without conscious thought she leapt after. When she landed, she felt fresh blood dampen the bandage she had tied around her leg, but no great amount of pain. Abstract pleasure that she had calculated so exactly raised her spirits as she bolted into the darkness that had been concealed behind the silver door.

Firekeeper’s night vision was very good, but the brilliant glow that had accompanied the unsealing of the door had left her temporarily night-blind. Truth, gifted as all cats were with an inner eyelid, did not suffer the same penalty and charged ahead.

Behind her, Firekeeper heard a dull thump as Blind Seer landed in the trench, but she did not pause in her pursuit of Truth. Blind Seer could track her by scent. Truth could see in the dark. She alone was handicapped here, and could not give up any advantage. A moment later, she felt the heat of Blind Seer’s breath on the back of her legs, a sniff as he checked her wound, the warmth moving beside her as he came around and took point.

She let him do so without protest. That’s what pack mates were for—providing strength and skill you yourself lacked. Firekeeper no more lost status for letting Blind Seer go ahead of her than she would have if she let him pull down an elk she had driven into his range.

“Truth’s scent is still hot,” Blind Seer said. “Can you track me if I go faster?”

“In a moment,” Firekeeper assured him. “Go ahead. I will follow as swiftly as I can.”

The blue-eyed wolf did not ask if she was “all right,” as a human certainly would have done. He trusted the evidence of his nose, but that didn’t mean Firekeeper would escape his scolding for her impulsiveness—that would come later. For now there was the hunt, and the hunt was all.

Firekeeper followed, finding that the surrounding area was not completely dark. They had passed from one space into another—she could tell, for the echoing of sound changed—and in this area where sound was more muted, and her feet fell upon what felt like thick carpeting, light glowed dully from above.

Glancing up, she saw pale blocks of stone such as she had seen in other buildings crafted by the Old Country rulers. These were artifacts, used to give light without the need for fire. She had seen such dead and useless, and she had seen such restored to life. These seemed to be nearly dead, but Firekeeper was glad for their faint glow. Had she been reared like the Wise Wolves to pray, she would have offered a brief prayer of thanks. Having been raised without such, she passed under and on, merely grateful.