Wolfs Soul

by Jane Lindskold

  Footsteps thumped down the corridor, announcing the remainder of the pack hurrying to join them. The first to reach Blind Seer knelt beside him with barely a sound. Seeing what was needed, Firekeeper removed short lengths of rope from one of her belt pouches. By the time the others arrived—led by Ranz, followed by Laria, with Wythcombe huffing up last—Kabot was bound. Together Firekeeper and Blind Seer moved to see what they could do to rebalance the unequal battle between Chsss and Zazaral.

  “Chsss must have knowed he cannot win,” Firekeeper said, her voice tight with frustration. “So if he do this, he do this so we can win. But how with a prey we cannot touch?”

  During his battle against querinalo, Blind Seer had gone into spaces where the then-bodiless Meddler had been embodied. He suspected that now Meddler battled Meddler in some similar space.

  “Ask Wythcombe, can he make us a way to where they are, fast.”

  Firekeeper translated, and Wythcombe replied. “If Arasan still has a link to Chsss, perhaps, but I would need more mana than...”

  Blind Seer interrupted. “Tell Laria and Farborn to give Wythcombe the artifacts.”

  Firekeeper did, but her slumped shoulders said she wondered if they would ever get them back.

  Blind Seer huffed. “It will not matter if we do not defeat this one. Even now, Chsss dims. When he is eaten, then this other will take all the threads and weave them into one whole.”

  “I know. But you won the hunt, and have not eaten from the kill.”

  “I eat, even if not from the head wolf’s portion.”

  Arasan had hastened to Wythcombe. “What should I do?” He gestured to his knife, spread a hand as if offering to cut himself.

  Wythcombe shuddered. “We are not sunk so low. Your music is magic. Sing!”

  Arasan drew breath, then, with the aplomb of a seasoned performer, launched into a ballad about a gentleman rogue and a ridiculous gamble. Wythcombe began a chant that blended with the ballad as the howls of wolves young and old blend in songs to the moon. A portal did not so much open as the two struggling shapes seemed more solid. Blind Seer saw them as wolves. He did not doubt that the humans saw them as humans.

  Fleetingly, he wondered what Firekeeper saw them as, but did not ask. Chsss-wolf was bleeding from numerous slashes. Despite this, he kept a fierce grip on his attacker’s scruff, forcing the other to drag him as, with single-minded intensity, it paced toward what Blind Seer’s senses showed him both as a delicious buck and a potent magical aura: Guulvalkay.

  “We go!” he howled and, with Firekeeper beside him, Farborn clinging to her shoulder, they leapt forward.

  Laria hadn’t tried to read the artifacts while they were in her custody, but their power had been so intense that she would have needed far more skill at shielding herself to keep them from making an impression on her. Even after she surrendered them to Wythcombe, she remained attuned to the magical currents that permeated the chamber.

  Wythcombe and the two artifacts were easy to sense. From there she slid along Xixavalkay to its other half. Beside it was a spicy glow, like but unlike that of Teyvalkay. That must be Palvalkay. Here she paused, squinching shut her eyes to better read the impressions.

  With her eyes closed, Laria was aware as never before of the auras of her companions. Then there was Kabot. She shrank from letting her awareness go closer to him, associating him with the sting of the knife on her throat, the crippling panic. She pressed closer, confirmed what she had heretofore only vaguely suspected, then looked for help.

  Wythcombe was chanting something under his breath. Firekeeper and Blind Seer poised to spring, Farborn on Firekeeper’s shoulder. Ranz hovered near Wythcombe, ready to assist if called upon, but too courteous to intervene without request. Laria tapped Ranz on the shoulder. When he looked down at her, she stretched so she could speak directly in his ear.

  “Chsss drove Zazaral from Kabot, but he didn’t break Kabot’s connection to Palvalkay and his bit of Xixavalkay. Zazaral is drawing on them through Kabot. Can you do something?”

  She felt proud when Ranz didn’t ask why she was so certain. He only nodded.

  “I’ll try.”

  Wythcombe was doing something that Laria felt as realities being dragged into harmony. Arasan had adapted his song. The gambler had cards up his sleeve. Laria hoped that she and Ranz could be two of those cards.

  She pointed to where the artifacts were secreted beneath Kabot’s shirt, close to his heart. She shuddered. Not just close. They were intertwined with his flesh, sinking deeper. She wondered if the living statue they had fought had, perhaps, taken on its own unlife in this way.

  Ranz squeezed water into his hand, froze it into a curving knife blade. With this he slit Kabot’s shirt from navel to throat, and then pulled it aside. At the choking noise he made when he saw the artifacts sinking through Kabot’s skin, Kabot opened his eyes.

  “Do it. I wanted to learn blood magic. I’m having second thoughts.”

  In those few words, the slight smile Kabot forced to his lips, Laria understood the loyalty Kabot had engendered in his cabal, why Wythcombe still loved him after these many years and so many betrayals. Suddenly, she, also, didn’t want to see Kabot die. Nonetheless, the threads of Sykavalkay could not be left where they were, feeding mana to Zazaral.

  Ranz showed himself the doctor’s son as he dropped to his knees beside Kabot. He reshaped his ice blade into a scalpel, then splashed water onto the peculiarly bloodless wound in Kabot’s chest, freezing flesh and artifacts alike. Laria saw the mana that flowed from the threads toward Zazaral slow, and guessed that Ranz had woven a barrier into his ice.

  She had to look away when Ranz actually began to cut into Kabot, memories of the hospital on the Nexus Islands flooding her, bringing with them an overwhelming wash of grief, fear, and desperation. Thus she saw how Firekeeper, Blind Seer, and Farborn were fighting something that was one moment human, one moment wolf, sometimes a hybrid of the two, sometimes, weirdly, even a swarm of bees. When it was this last, Farborn was in his element, snatching individuals from the swarm, squeezing them in half with his crystalline talons. The parts that fell to the floor did not rejoin the swarm, while the wounds Firekeeper and Blind Seer inflicted healed at an alarming rate.

  Laria bit into her lip. Farborn bore a weapon given by Rhinadei. Volsyl was of Rhinadei as well. Perhaps it would also cause lasting injury. She drew the sword, feeling its delight that it would be able to guide her in such a noble cause. Laria circled swiftly to where she could join the battle without crowding her allies. As she closed, the misty figure became less human, less wolf, more the bee swarm, perhaps because the swarm could split and face many opponents without greatly diminishing its effectiveness.

  Growling, Blind Seer spread his wings and took flight, circling above so that the swarm could not escape, buffeting it with the downdraft of his wings. Laria gestured as if to give Volsyl to Firekeeper, but the wolf-woman shook her head.

  “Yours! I get my own.”

  Laria wondered what Firekeeper could possibly mean, but slashed gamely at the edges of the swarm. Her blows were hampered because Chsss—seen as a human who looked a little like Arasan, a little like Laria’s late father, Ollaris—was enshrouded within the swarm. He resisted with weapons Laria could feel but not see, growing weaker with every breath.

  Then Firekeeper returned, holding a wildly burning torch that, with every step she took, became less a torch and more a long knife with a blade of white-hot fire. Laria sensed that this transformation was an element of the charm Wythcombe had cast to make it possible for them to reach Zazaral. On impulse, she drew upon her tenuous link to Teyvalkay and willed Volsyl into flame.

  Smoke and fire are deadly to bees, hardly less deadly to human or wolf. Zazaral erratically flickered between shapes, seeking some advantage. The link to Sykavalkay that had been an advantage now became a chain. Zazaral severed it with a gesture. The remaining bees in the swarm cradled Chsss in a lover’s embrace.

  “You
have thwarted me,” Zazaral buzzed, and nuzzled Chsss. “But I will take you with me so you may make amends.”

  Chsss must know that neither burning blades nor even Farborn’s agile talons could pull him loose. Nonetheless, he forced something of his usual insouciant expression.

  “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  But Laria was having nothing of this noble resignation. Her father had died in her arms. She wasn’t about to lose the one who had been a father to her newly talented self. Volsyl could slice through spells, then surely…

  Not bothering to shape the rest of the thought, Laria willed Volsyl to excise Chsss from Zazaral’s hold. The power of Teyvalkay washed through her with an intensity that brought her down onto one knee and nearly blacked her out. She refused to lose her focus, because to do so would be to fail her father all over again. Volsyl moved in a complicated series of slices that nearly took Laria’s arms out of her shoulder joints and made her wrists pop, but it cut Chsss free.

  As soon as the swarm parted, Blind Seer dropped down from above, grabbed Chsss and hauled him from Zazaral’s encircling hold. As the wolf’s moth wings beat with a speed worthy of Farborn’s knife-edged wings, Zazaral screamed in rage, collapsing upon herself. Then, with an inrush of air that made Laria’s ears pop, Zazaral vanished.

  Laria tried to struggle to her feet, fell instead, and Firekeeper caught her. The pride on the wolf-woman’s face healed something long-broken in the younger woman. She burst into tears, and Firekeeper patted her.

  “You’ve done well,” the husky voice said. “Very, very well.”

  Kabot decided he was fed up with fainting, but he supposed that doing so while someone excised talismans from his flesh was a reasonable reaction. When he came to, someone had tightly bandaged his wound, which didn’t hurt nearly as much as he thought it should. That serious-looking young mage must be something of a prodigy.

  The large room was no longer filled with the violent storm of sparks that had erupted as soon as Zazaral had begun to probe the wards. A woman was speaking. This wasn’t Zazaral, nor Laria, nor Firekeeper. She spoke with an accent he couldn’t place, and though her voice was level and controlled, there was strength behind it.

  “We cannot leave Sykavalkay intact,” the speaker was saying. “Long since, I suspected that Zazaral had prompted me to create it for her own purposes. Still, pride and anger made me complete it. I hinted to my uncle that he could prove his worth by destroying it, but he only went as far as separating the threads.”

  Kabot struggled to sit up, found firm hands lifting him, and saw Firekeeper at his side. Guard or nurse? He didn’t care. He nodded politely, then turned to face the speaker. In the two ethereal women who now addressed the group, he recognized the aura that had defended Guulvalkay—and himself—from Zazaral.

  “Are you Jyanee? That isn’t how Zazaral told the story, not precisely, but I guess she wouldn’t. Why would she want you to make such a thing?”

  A smoky masculine shape said, “Meddlers often crave immortality. One lifetime doesn’t seem enough to set everything right. Zazaral seems to have been thinking big.”

  If he sounded impressed, Kabot didn’t blame him.

  Ranz asked, “But, Chsss, if Zazaral was so powerful, why didn’t she just make Sykavalkay herself?”

  Chsss replied, “Having a lot of power and matching ambition does not equal having the ability to implement ideas—a great architect may not know how to mix mortar. And Zazaral is a Meddler. We justify a great deal by thinking we’re showing others how to best reach their potential.”

  Laria asked, “But, great ladies, why didn’t you destroy the threads later? I mean, when you realized that Zazaral was using you?”

  “Zazaral,” said the second ethereal form, who Kabot realized was Onorina, “gave hints that soon would come a great disaster, and that the shield defending Rhinadei would fall were it not bolstered. I convinced Jyanee to let me link Guulvalkay, which taps Rhinadei’s own magic, to the shield here, where I resided as keeper. She agreed. But Zazaral then came for it, as the least defended of the four threads. We bound ourselves to protect it.”

  Firekeeper huffed. “Virim and querinalo were like an avalanche, I think. So Rhinadei’s shield held because of Guulvalkay?”

  “It did. Yet now I realize that the threads must all be untwined,” Jyanee said. “Even if they were buried at the planet’s heart, Zazaral or some other would find them. Onorina and I have weakened over the long decades of our vigil. Even this time, we could do little more than protect Guulvalkay.”

  Wythcombe spoke, “What will happen to the Shield without Guulvalkay to enhance it? Will it fall?”

  Onorina shook her head. “But it will need more tending than has been given, especially at weak points such as this one. It seems that some responsibilities have been forgotten.”

  Wythcombe nodded. “I have long believed so. The rituals that once were done seasonally and throughout Rhinadei are now done only yearly, and only at the one remaining gate.”

  “It will take more than seasonal rituals to preserve places like this”—Onorina’s loose hand gesture indicated the Mended Shield—“especially from creatures like Zazaral. She is greatly weakened, but she now bears no love for Rhinadei.”

  Kabot cleared his throat. “I realize that I’m a doomed man, but in these last hours I realized that I love Rhinadei more than I knew. Wythcombe, if you would speak for me, I would swear an oath, as binding as any wish, that in penance for my crimes I will devote the remainder of my life to tending this shield.”

  He almost saw the boy who had been his childhood friend in the grin that lit Wythcombe’s face. “I could make myself your custodian. The counsel might agree, especially if I hinted that otherwise I will go explore this great wide world that is now open to us. I can be a hermit here as well as on a mountaintop.”

  Jyanee spread her hands. “You living must do what you can. I cannot be swayed from my course. I wove Sykavalkay. Now here assembled are the pieces, and I will unweave them.”

  Jyanee and Onorina stood tall and proud as, with a sound like breaking harp strings, Sykvalkay untwined. Right hand clasped in left, the ancient sorceresses made a gesture mingling benediction and farewell. Then, as the artifact that had both extended and distorted their existence swirled apart, they faded, ebbed, and were gone.

  “Subtly handled,” Wythcombe announced, but Firekeeper did not need Blind Seer’s nose to tell that the old spellcaster was shaken. “Nonetheless, there are those in Rhinadei who will have sensed the shield weakening. It won’t be long before some arrive here. Chsss, you might want to absent yourself.”

  Firekeeper looked to where Chsss, to her eyes wearing the guise of a particularly striking creature with a wolf’s head upon a more or less human body, stood surveying them all. Although he wasn’t completely solid, he was impossible to ignore. He panted a grin half-laughter, half-challenge. Blind Seer rumbled a low warning growl.

  Chsss ignored this, though Firekeeper had no doubt he had heard. Instead he surveyed their company, his wry grin not hiding his genuine affection.

  “I suppose I must go. If you’re not going to force Kabot to bear the full blame for what has happened, you’re going to need to mention Zazaral, and mentioning Zazaral will doubtless place suspicion on the head of even innocent, helpful me. I did…”

  But whatever Chsss was about to say was cut off by Arasan.

  “You could go and not, you know. I mean, you could come back to me.”

  Chsss’s astonishment was genuine. “Our deal was done. Your body was loaned to me, as long as I could keep it from dying. I did. But I won’t hold you to an agreement made on such terms, especially when I was the one to break it.”

  “To fight for us,” Arasan replied, his voice taking on his storytelling cadence, “that’s why you left. Let’s not embarrass each other with sentimentality or gratitude. Let’s just say I’ve gotten used to having someone to talk with when I wake up in the middle of the night. You
’re welcome here, even if you did, perhaps, withhold just a wee bit about how powerful you still may be, eh?”

  Chsss hesitated long enough that Firekeeper wondered if perhaps he would prefer to resume the freedom of the disembodied. Then he chuckled.

  “The emergency counsel never even suspected that we two were in your body. Wythcombe now, I think he did but was too polite, but…” The chuckle turned into laughter. “I’ll take your offer, Arasan, but on these terms. None but us here will know about my role in Zazaral’s defeat. Now that I think about it, do they need to know about Zazaral at all?”

  Wythcombe considered. “I only mentioned Sykavalkay to Varelle, not that we suspected Kabot might have an ally beyond his original cabal.”

  Chsss’s grin widened. “Then let them believe that some bit of your magic, Wythcombe—perhaps in combination with Kabot realizing that he’d bitten off more than he could chew—brought the artifact to heel so its creator could destroy it. Yes, I like that. I’ve always preferred to do my good deeds in secret.”

  Blind Seer snorted laughter. “Be quick about it then. I smell a change in the winds. We will have company soon.”

  Firekeeper translated, adding, “We wolves go to meet them. You humans, shape words to protect this outlier who wishes to join the pack once more.”

  She saw Kabot’s eyes widen when he realized she meant him. “You’ll accept my offer? Even after all I did?”

  “Wolves,” Firekeeper replied, “know to accept an honest surrender. Why weaken the pack?”

  She looked over at Laria, to whom Kabot had done the most direct harm, and saw that the younger woman was deep in thought, tapping her fingers as if counting off some tally Firekeeper could only imagine.

  Later, after Firekeeper and Blind Seer escorted Orten, Bordyn, Hanya, Varelle, and Erldon to the shield chamber, Arasan wove a tale explaining what had happened, concluding with a rousing description of Jyanee and Onorina destroying Sykavalkay. As Wythcombe had suspected, those who were associated with Rhinadei’s shield had felt when Guulvalkay had been withdrawn.