“Harvested?” Laria echoed. She heard her voice squeak, but one did not grow up beneath the rule of the Once Dead without knowing all too much about such practices. “Wait! Are you saying it’s possible to work spells without using blood—or was whoever wrote this saying that they had given up magic? No. That couldn’t be the case. How else would they work the gates?”
She knew she was babbling, but the strangeness was catching up with her: night instead of day; weird stars; peculiar inscriptions; the unease she sensed from her companions.
“Yes, it is possible,” the Meddler replied to her question, “to do spell-based magic without the use of blood, but it’s much more difficult and can drain those who practice it to the point that working even a simple spell makes them useless.”
Farborn made a sound somewhere between a squawk and a screech that managed to reflect just the mixture of dismay and fascination that Laria herself felt.
“Then, do all of these inscriptions repeat the same message?” she asked. “That people who use blood magic aren’t welcome here?”
“Close enough,” Arasan replied, “allowing for varied cultural biases. What bothers me is what these lines don’t say.”
“Namely,” the Meddler put in, “what happens to those who violate these restrictions. As you may recall, the gate was sealed on this side. That Virim managed to undo the seal doesn’t change that in using blood magic to activate the gate we have probably already broken these restrictions.”
“But surely the people who wrote this would be reasonable,” Laria argued. “I mean, how could you know you’d broken the rules before you knew those rules existed?”
“Possibly,” said a voice that was neither that of Arasan or the Meddler, being light, sweet, and definitely feminine, “because when those inscriptions were made, the writers did not know how long it would be before the seal would be broken. They intended those words as a proclamation of the local philosophy, a statement of all that the community stands for, of the values that it held—and still holds to this day.”
Laria swung about to find that a woman had appeared among them. Her age was impossible to determine, although she certainly possessed some years, for there were time-etched lines around her mouth and near her eyes. Her skin was a rich brown, her dark hair streaked with silver, her eyes a pale grey that showed flecks of color that seemed to change with the light. She wore a straight-lined, aesthetically pleasing gown in a silvery-white that complemented the streaks in her hair.
“I am Varelle, the Gatewatcher. Who are you? Have you come to Rhinadei by purpose or through chance?”
Thankfully, it was Arasan—not the Meddler—who spoke next.
“I am Arasan, called Two Lives. This is Laria, and this”—he held up a hand to indicate where the merlin anxiously sidled back and forth along the under-dome ledge— “is Farborn.”
Varelle acknowledged these introductions with a polite inclination of her head.
Arasan continued, drawing on his considerable charm, “As for whether we came here—did you call this Rhinadei?—by purpose or by chance, the most honest reply is by both and by neither.”
Varelle’s full lips—they were ornamented by some cosmetic that gave them an opalescent shine—moved in an expression that was neither smile nor frown, but rather a request for clarification. Arasan obliged.
“We came through the gate by purpose, but without knowing where it would take us. Therefore, we did not know it would take us to Rhinadei.”
“Why did you come through the gate?”
“To find out where the gate led.”
“Even though it was locked and sealed?”
“Perhaps,” Arasan admitted disarmingly, “precisely because it was both locked and sealed. The only thing more unsettling than the unknown is the unknowable.”
“Hmm…” Varelle’s response was neither agreement or disagreement, merely acknowledgement.
Laria knew Arasan didn’t need her help. He was by far the best diplomat of their group, but she had to ask.
“Ma’am, did you come through the gate? This building’s door, it’s closed, you see, but I was looking right at the gate—at least I thought I was—and I didn’t see you arrive.”
“I came,” Varelle replied, “because your coming created a gate made from need. I would have arrived sooner but it has been very, very long since such as I was needed.” Her gaze shifted to Arasan. “Will you tell me from whence you and your comrades came?”
“The Nexus Islands,” Arasan said promptly. It had been decided before their departure that attempting to hide this would be foolish. “Would you have expected another answer?”
“The name of the place might have changed,” Varelle said, but something in her tone made Laria think that an evasion was hidden in the simple words. “It has been a long, long time since that gate was opened.”
“Rhinadei,” Arasan said. “I can’t say I’ve heard that name, but it is somehow familiar.”
In those words, Laria heard the careful phrasing that Arasan relied upon to keep from lying directly when he was drawing on the Meddler’s knowledge. Among the most commonly used magics were those that separated truth from falsehood. It was always wise to avoid direct lies unless absolutely necessary. Even some form of half-truth was better than an outright lie.
“Rhinadei is the name by which we call this”—Varelle paused to consider— “not so much ‘land’ as philosophy. Even were I to leave here, I would still be in Rhinadei as long as I maintained my principles.”
She paused, looking around the domed chamber as if seeking someone. “You two and the falcon, is this all your company?”
Laria spoke, knowing Arasan would have difficulty admitting to “you two” when two were more like three.
“Our company includes these you see, ma’am, and two others—a woman and a wolf, though the woman would say that they are two wolves. She’s very odd that way. I’ll admit, I’m worried about them. They haven’t come back and, well, I was wondering. Could another Gatewatcher like you have found them and gotten the wrong idea? The wolf is very, very large, so large he might be taken for a monster by those who didn’t know him.”
And even, she added silently to herself, at times by those who do.
“There is no other Gatewatcher,” Varelle replied cryptically, “but in the lands surrounding this building there are hazards even a wolf—or two—would have reason to fear.”
Blind Seer and Firekeeper felt the first tremors as they were completing their fifth round of the hill upon which stood the building holding the gate. Since neither Firekeeper’s visual scan nor Blind Seer’s olfactory survey had revealed much about their surroundings, the pair had decided to pursue a more systematic search of the area. Using the hill as a center point, they had spiraled out, each staying far enough apart that a trap would not be likely to capture or injure them both. In this way they had moved outward, gradually increasing the distance encompassed in their circles.
Their search had confirmed what they already believed—that the surrounding grasslands supported remarkably few larger creatures, either the grazers that should have been drawn to this well-watered region or the predators that would have followed them as faithfully as death does life. But of anything larger than a jackrabbit or a groundhog they found no trace. Yet the land was not ravaged as it should have been if nothing was keeping the gnawers and nibblers in check.
If the pair of scouts had been human, they would have mused aloud over possible explanations, but these two were wolves and, as with all wild creatures, the unknown was not a reason for speculation but for caution. So it was that Blind Seer and Firekeeper felt the uneasy throbbing of the ground beneath their feet well before a human would have done so.
A flock of grouse exploding from the thick grass a few paces away, the white-tailed flash of a rabbit’s rump confirmed that the sensation was not usual here. Had it been so, these prey animals would have remained frozen in the tall grass, hoping that stillness would hide them
from the death that walked on four legs and two only paces away.
Firekeeper halted mid-step and knelt with her hand pressed to the ground, trying to judge from what direction the shaking came. In six moonspans since the war that had confirmed the right of the Nexus Islanders to control and administer the gates, she and Blind Seer had used both those gates and the reputation they had won in the war to see something of the lands usually lumped together as the “Old World” by those who lived in the “New.” There they had encountered creatures whose size and mass rivaled that of the elk they knew, creatures whose herd movements made the ground shake. Those creatures might be herbivores, but even wolves such as Blind Seer and Firekeeper quickly learned to respect them and get out of their way.
Blind Seer tested the vibrations against each paw in turn.
“The trembling is everywhere about us in equal measure,” he was beginning when the ground some ten paces in front of them cracked open. The next crevice opened even closer, and the two wolves backed hastily away. The shaking in the earth was growing in intensity. Firekeeper, inconvenienced by having only two legs, would have fallen had Blind Seer not slammed himself against her, giving her his own tall back to brace herself against. Her hand squeezed once in thanks, but there was no time for more.
Not content to shake and rupture, the earth began punching forth irregular slabs of rock at the two wolves. Their nostrils and mouths filled with grit, their ears with the crack and rumble of broken stone. Firekeeper jumped away from one of the broken earth’s punches. Blind Seer ducked beneath another.
“Run?” Blind Seer suggested, his fur rising in a prickling ridge from his hackles then along his back at the idea of turning tail on the unknown.
“Run,” Firekeeper agreed, “before its aim improves.”
The pair turned as one and stretched out their legs, dodging about the wider crevices, leaping long-limbed over the narrower. They were doing very well. Then as Blind Seer launched himself over a widening fissure, the soil beneath his hind legs crumbled, robbing his leap of power. Instead of landing solidly on the other side, only his forepaws touched, slipping as he scrambled for solid purchase on the broken grass. Knowing himself lost, Blind Seer did not scream or call for help as a human would have done, but composed himself to manage the fall as best he might.
But though Firekeeper might be a wolf in heart and soul, in body she was a human—and her human body had been toned and honed by challenges few humans ever met. Sensing that something untoward had happened to her partner, the wolf-woman glanced over in time to see Blind Seer fail to make his landing and begin to slide into the gaping crevice.
Firekeeper was wolf enough not to waste breath in scream or howl. Instead, she pivoted in midair, turning even as her bare feet touched the shaking ground. Flinging herself down on her belly, she shot out her left hand to grab the gigantic wolf by his scruff and stay his fall. With her right hand, she jerked her Fang from its sheath and thrust the long blade deeply into the thick grassland sod.
So anchored, the wolf-woman hauled with all her considerable strength to raise the wolf closer to the edge. Blind Seer did not struggle, only tossed back his head so that he would see when Firekeeper had pulled him close to the upper edge. As soon as he was, he put out one enormous paw, then the other in an attempt to lever himself up so as to at least take some of his weight off of Firekeeper’s left arm.
Wolves are far better climbers than most humans would be comfortable knowing, but they are neither cats nor bears, who have paws made for gripping. Moreover, Blind Seer was a very large wolf, a factor that usually served both him and Firekeeper quite well. In this circumstance, however, when his paws came to rest on the crevice’s edge, the crumbling soil broke beneath his weight, causing him to drop deeper. He heard the huff of Firekeeper’s breath as he slid, but her firm grip on the loose skin of his scruff only tightened.
Again, a human might have said something like, “Let me fall! Save yourself!” but Blind Seer knew his Firekeeper. He could smell the determination in her sweat and knew that she would fall and take her chances with him rather than deliberately letting go. She held him until the worst of the earth’s shaking abated, then shifted her center of balance.
“I am going to pull myself to my knees,” she said, “so as to raise you over the edge. Do not unbalance me by pawing at the ground. Wait until you are clear and then…”
She was moving as she spoke, her actions part of the explanation. Blind Seer forced himself to hang limp, though he longed to do anything but. Inch by tortuous inch, the wolf-woman moved from her prone position. She must move slowly, for she could not risk unbalancing and so pitching both herself and her precious charge into the depths. With trust beyond that of either human or wolf, Blind Seer waited motionless and watchful. His head had risen above the crevice’s edge when he felt Firekeeper shift her grip so that she could use both hands to hold his scruff. Again, she rebalanced, then, with one powerful thrust from two legs that were muscled from hours of running at a wolf’s mile-eating jog, she was upright, hauling up with her most of Blind Seer’s upper body. However, his legs still remained beneath the fissure’s edge, effectively useless.
Rather than attempting to raise Blind Seer higher than her head, Firekeeper staggered back, then deliberately fell so that their combined weight carried them to land in a graceless heap on the torn sod. Only then, as if it had been holding its breath and watching the struggle, did the earth resume its violent shaking.
Firekeeper roughly hugged Blind Seer, then rolled to retrieve her Fang from where it was buried blade deep in the turf. She dragged herself back to Blind Seer’s side.
“I would not do that again,” she said. “Were it any but you at risk, sweet hunter, I could not. Ah, my poor fingers and shoulders!”
Again, she did not so much speak as show in the rotating of shoulders and stretching of strained muscles how she felt. Blind Seer gave her a sloppy lick by way of thanks, but his gaze was occupied studying the land surrounding them.
“The ground is more severely broken out where we began our run. Only there does the earth stab forth those stony tusks.”
“As if warning us back,” Firekeeper replied. “I am minded of a herd with horns bent against us. Shall we see if the earth’s horned head pursues us if we meekly retreat back up the hill? We need to check on Arasan and Laria in any case—although I trust that Farborn would have come to tell us if any great danger threatened them.”
“If he could,” Blind Seer reminded, agreeing with her choice of destination by turning his feet that way. “If the ceiling of that round building shed pieces down inside, he might have been trapped or squashed.”
“We will hurry,” Firekeeper agreed, sparing a hand to stroke along the wolf’s back, reassuring herself that he was indeed safely beside her. “They may have felt the earth shake and be worried for us.”
Unspoken between them was their shared fear that something worse than the shaking earth might have attacked their friends.
II
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY UPON the heels of Varelle’s words, the floor began to vibrate, then to shake. Above, Farborn shrieked and launched himself into the air, cutting through the space above their heads in tight, panicked circles. Drops of white spattered the polished floor tiles.
Arasan—or the Meddler, in this case Laria could not tell them apart—spoke something that had to be a profanity, although Laria did not recognize the language. Noticing that Varelle remained calm, Laria moved to the middle of the room, inside the pattern of the falcon’s panicked flight. There she crouched to steady herself, pressing her palms to the floor, to confirm that the building felt itself secure against such situations.
Laria called to Farborn. “Calm down! This building isn’t going to fall.” She held up one arm, padded for just this purpose. “Here!”
As Farborn swept down and glided in for a landing, Varelle spoke to Laria. “You seem very confident. Aren’t you afraid there might be monsters?”
Laria
didn’t care to tell a stranger—especially one who might not be a friend—why she was so certain the building was in no danger of collapsing. Mindful of not lying, she spoke around the point.
“Sure, I’m scared of monsters. I’ve seen my share. But you’re not scared, so I figured the building must be built to stand against whatever’s causing this.”
From his perch on her arm, Farborn made an approving squawk—at least Laria chose to take it as approving—and sidled up her arm to her shoulder. Once settled on the pad there, he began gently nibbling along the talons of one foot as if stating that he’d never really been afraid.
“I could,” Varelle countered, slightly nettled, “be safe from the monsters that dwell here whereas you would not be—but I will say this. You are right. This building is in no danger of collapsing, nor will any monster from without find entry.”
She smiled mysteriously. “Rhinadei would need to be destroyed for this building to fall.”
“Confident,” the Meddler said. “So you have many such earthquakes?”
Varelle was opening her mouth to reply when there was a banging at the door and Firekeeper’s husky voice called, “Laria? Farborn? Arasan? The door will not open. Let us in!”
“Your absent comrade?” Varelle said, making a small gesture toward the door with one hand. “By all means, let her in.”
Laria moved quickly, lest Varelle change her mind. From his perch on her shoulder, Farborn shrieked—doubtless communicating something about their situation to Firekeeper and Blind Seer. Glancing at the merlin, Laria used the motion to check Varelle’s reaction. To her relief, Varelle did not seem to be aware of the significance of the bird’s noises. Good. The strange woman might be powerful, but she was not omniscient.
As Laria opened the door, she said quickly—because it would be odd if she didn’t, not because she didn’t think the wolves already knew— “Firekeeper, there’s a woman here. She just appeared from nowhere. Keep a hold on Blind Seer.”
Before passing within, Firekeeper flashed Laria a quick, approving smile. Then she pulled the door wide enough to admit her and the wolf as one.
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