When he came into his hut, his mother, Carina, looked at him. In many ways she was like a dog herself—lean, strong, with soft hair that tumbled down her back in a thick, neat wave. Her eyes were delicate and brown, but uncomfortably keen. “Pietre,” she said, stopping him as he ran for his room, “the herbs.”
Pietre stopped, his back still turned from the penetrating eyes.
“We slept badly last night,” his mother said, “and a bright batch of mint does wonders for the head.”
“Mint was scarce this morning, Moecka.”
“Was it? Adventure, I take it, was not.”
And with that, Pietre faced his mother. “I found him in the woods. Orphaned.” He hoped it was a lie.
His mother wiped her hands on her dress and took the steaming water off the fire before moving to Pietre. Carefully, she took the pup into her hands, observing the dark muzzle, the thick tail, the odd point of its tiny ears. His mother handled the dog as though it was a delicate doll and Pietre guessed she had never seen a dog so young.
“Orphaned?” she asked.
Pietre did not dare to answer. Humans, he knew, occasionally abandoned their weak or injured to the woods to starve or die during the night hunts, but dogs did not.
“An unusual pup,” she said, her voice soft, measured. She returned the dog to Pietre. “You know that dogs cannot live among us. They prefer the company of their own and the freedom of living outside city walls.”
Pietre could not argue. Dog packs roved through the woods, scavenging, singing, and surviving better away from the human villages that sweltered under taxation, lack of sanitation, and the heavy hands of the Veranderen. To house a dog could put it at risk.
The dog whimpered and burrowed deeper into Pietre’s chest.
His mother tightened her lips into a pale line. “He is very small. He will need to be nourished today. Tomorrow we will seek a she-hound to nurse it.” She paused, pointing to a pot of milk warming over the fire and firmly repeated, “Tomorrow.”
Pietre took a rag from the kitchen, twisted it into a thin rope and dipped this into the pot of milk. He lowered the dripping rag to the hungry dog’s lips and let it suck until it whimpered for more. Pietre fed the dog over and over until the pot ran dry. When it did, he cradled the tiny pup against his neck and by the warmth of the fire, the two of them slept in a small heap.
Pietre awoke only when he heard his father, Jager, washing at the door. The sun, though still bright, was now beginning its descent, and the moon rested—a slender matriarch in her throne of purple sky. Each afternoon Pietre’s father returned dirty and stooped from the copper mines where he worked harvesting metals to be refined and formed, then sold or sent to the head city.
Groggy, Pietre watched his father come in and move close to his mother. Without words, his father held up his palm. His mother returned the gesture, placing her own palm softly against his. It was a gesture common among adult relations or close friends. But before their hands had parted, Pietre watched his father bend down to place his forehead gently against his mother’s face. They stood like that, heads pressed softly together, for several moments. They had done this for as long as Pietre could remember, but lately it had begun to embarrass him. He turned away and with his movement the silence of the hut broke and his father came over to sit by him at the hearth.
Pietre sat up, dog in hand.
“And what is this?” his father said, stunned and grinning.
“I found him,” Pietre said excitedly, forgetting for a moment the terror of the morning.
“In the wood,” his mother cut in. “Orphaned.”
His father, too, paused to examine the unusual ears, but did not linger as long as his mother had. “Well, then, does he have a name?”
“The dog does not need a name from us,” Carina said. “It’s not as though the dog could be kept.” She laughed at the thought.
Pietre carefully pressed against one of the dog’s soft ears and said, quietly leaning toward his father, “If I could, I’d name him Humphrey.”
His father whispered back, “And if you could, that’d be an excellent name.”
His mother cleared her throat and nodded toward an empty pan.
“Apparently, it’s time to see what the old hens have for us today,” his father said, winking. He was gone only moments before he returned. “Carina, there’s a dying she-dog out here—ripped to shreds. Grab some rags while I get water.”
Pietre sat frozen, clutching the little dog against him. Both shuddered, but neither moved until Pietre’s father called, “Son, bring me that pot.”
Pietre did not want to obey. He knew the dog outside was the she-dog Hannah and he knew what it meant that she had brought none of the remaining pups with her. Yet when his father called once more with a harsh “Pietre” there was nothing to do, but rise and get the pot. His father filled it with water and together he and Carina methodically washed, dried, and pressed upon the bloody gashes that refused to heal. Pietre was sent to fetch more rags, to heat water, to gather bread crusts. It was difficult work, but soothing in its constancy. For a time, Pietre almost forgot the danger that Hannah was in as he moved steadily between pot and rag. And then, abruptly, his mother rose, placed the rag in the bucket and gently held the she-dog’s chin. “Ah now, my dear.” His mother’s face was set, but her eyes shimmered, flickering like candles lit behind windows when it rained. Pietre looked away, willing his body to stiffen, but trembling.
The she-dog sighed a soft “Thank you” to all of them, and then whispered something to Carina that only just brushed against Pietre’s ears. Carina listened for several minutes, her face pale but firm until finally the whispering stopped and Pietre’s mother rose to fetch a blanket while his father went to feed and milk the goat.
“Bring him,” the she-dog begged Pietre. “Please.”
He left and returned with her pup. She placed her head on the pup’s soft body as her breath came in shallower intervals.
When it seemed the she-dog had fallen into a hollow sleep, Pietre bent close to her face to listen for breath and was surprised when she spoke. “Take me outside of these walls, child. It is unwise to keep me here.”
“The dogs deserve the best we can give them,” Pietre said softly.
“The dogs protect their own,” she said. “You should too.”
Pietre pushed back a shudder and whispered, “A dog can hardly be thrown out like a sack of rotten potatoes.”
“Lovely sentiment,” she said, as though to scold him though there was an obvious fondness in her voice, “but not a very practical one.” Hannah’s breathing became slower, a dark rumble at the bottom of each breath.
Pietre turned to see his mother silhouetted in the doorway, watching. She stepped forward, stern and resolute. “Take the pup inside. His hair must be cut in the morning.” Pietre stood to obey and his mother continued, her voice softening, “If the pup is to live here—and that was what the she-hound requested—then I don’t want him to attract…fleas.”
With that, Carina covered Hannah in one of Pietre’s old quilts and hoisted her over a strong shoulder. Gently, she whispered a soft death incantation into the she-dog’s unhearing ear. Then, looking straight in front of her, she carried the dog away.
The pup whined and refused to move until Pietre picked him up, cradled like a human babe, and took him to the dusty hearth. “Humphrey is a good name,” Pietre whispered. The dog, able to understand though not yet to speak, pressed his nose against the boy in approval.
Pietre’s father returned to get the old shovel. By the fire, Pietre and Humphrey slept to the soft rhythmic sound of shifting dirt while outside the village, the moon hung like a cradle and the world lay eerily still.
Chapter 3
Wittendon stood with his trainer Sarak at the gates of the great coliseum. Two thick granite pillars etched with the moon and sun formed the main entrance, and when Wittendon walked through them he felt as though their weight pressed against his shoulders. Fo
ur moon cycles remained until the centennial Motteral Mal competition, but already human slaves and Veranderen workers moved around the area preparing for the legendary tournament.
Wittendon looked up the large Hill of Motteral to the small stone basin at its top—the Sacred Tablet—the point where it had all begun, where the Sourcestone had been placed in order to grant Veranderen their power, long life, prominence, magic, and insurmountable strength.
“Don’t look so terrified,” Sarak said, shifting into his flesh form for the day’s practice and tightening his cloak. “The Sacred Tablet is just a big bird bath that ladies kiss for love. Maybe it would help if you pictured them in their underwear.”
“The birds or the ladies?” Wittendon asked.
“Whichever you prefer.” Sarak winked.
At that Wittendon cracked a smile. “You know I hate these practices.”
“Ah,” Sarak teased, “just because you insist you have no magic—” Wittendon raised an eyebrow while Sarak continued, “Just because you practically swoon like a human female every time you think of the blades of the Shining Grey, just because you worry you’ll nearly get killed and wind up going crazy and have to spend the rest of your days in an asylum?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s all.” Wittendon walked past another competitor, an easterner named Koll. Koll had been practicing, but was now whispering to his trainer and pointing. Softly, a word floated across the field, a word Wittendon had heard too much in his relatively short lifetime: verlorn—magic-less one.
Koll turned back to his training as though he’d never said a word. When Wittendon looked in his direction, Koll maneuvered the tip of his blade so that it magically sparked the grass in front of him. Koll turned to look at the prince, bringing the sword to his lips. He blew off the tip of his sword and sneered. The hair on Wittendon’s neck rose up.
“Oh, and that,” Wittendon muttered to Sarak.
Sarak nodded more seriously than usual and tapped his foot so that a tiny tremor rolled through the earth toward Koll. It threw his balance off just enough that his hot sword bumped against his cheek, singeing the hair. Sarak smiled and looked at Wittendon as they walked away. “Well then, cheer up. Sadora’s going to be at the opening ceremonies.”
In spite of himself, Wittendon’s face lightened.
“At the opening ceremonies?” Wittendon asked as though to say, Only at the opening ceremonies?
“What?” Sarak asked. “Worried about losing your royal breakfast in front of her if she watches the actual tournament?”
“You know they tease me enough without you adding to it, right?” Wittendon tried to sound light-hearted, though the thought of Sarak’s twin sister watching him in the tournament did make him feel a little ill.
Sarak ignored him. “Don’t worry, Witt, she hasn’t much heart for games like this. She’ll only be there for the music and firelights.”
Wittendon sighed. No amount of joking could change the fact that he, a royal son, was on the brink of humiliating himself in front of thousands of his subjects.
Sarak lightened up on the teasing. “Maybe if you can actually manage to look unbroody, or is that in-broody—no that sounds too much like in-breedy—well, anyway, if you could look a little more cheerful, maybe I’ll let Sadora sit next to you instead of guarding her like she certainly deserves to be from such a wet blanket.”
Wittendon pulled his bronze cloak about his shoulders and looked at the fat sun and hazy half-moon, which circled across the sky like partners in a dance—one fiery-gowned, rising and dipping through the day and night, the other gauzy, reserved, yet nearly constant. Though the moon moved slowly through its monthly cycles, it never set completely, hovering near the horizon when the sun hung high, waiting for its turn to rise when the sun retired to her slumber.
“Well, it would be nice to see Sadora again, if she happens to come. And if I happen to see her. And if you happen to keep your yap shut for more than two minutes.”
Wittendon was about to attempt a proud, princely walk across the amphitheater for the day’s Motteral Mal training, when a runner wolf entered the pavilion, bowed low at his feet, and gave him a brief message. “Your father requests your presence, oh mighty lord. There is news of deafening sadness to any kin and keeper of the wolf. Come quickly, my lord, and see.”
With that Wittendon gave a quick nod to his friend, then turned and walked away, leaving the usually cheerful Sarak frowning at the long shadow that followed his prince.
Wittendon strode the immense corridor to his father’s throne room. There was only one reason his father would consider a summons urgent enough to interrupt his Motteral training: a wolf had been found dead. And if Wittendon was needed, the circumstances surrounding that death were unusual.
Before entering his father’s great chamber Wittendon loosened his cloak and shifted into his wolken form—hair thickening, teeth lengthening, blood pushing through his body with extra heat and strength. His hands grew knobby and bent, much like his father’s. His wolken form looked fierce at least. Which was good. He’d just as soon wander into his father’s chamber naked as he would show up for an important task flesh-faced like a human. Wittendon entered his father’s quarters, bowed quickly, and kissed his father’s fist. “You asked for me, Lord King.”
“The body is laid upon that table,” his father said, “much as it was found.”
As Wittendon moved near the dead wolf, his father followed. “The wolf Grender was one of my best and one I did not wish to lose.”
“My lord,” Wittendon murmured to his father, aware that Grender had been head of the Königsvaren.
His father, however, did not further acknowledge whether his general’s death brought him any especial sorrow and continued, “Additionally, I find the marks most unusual.”
Wittendon had noticed this as well. Most of the marks were like those from an animal with claws—scratches and crusty, bloodied gashes, while the clean cut in the hide seemed to come from a weapon. An unusual weapon. The wound gaped open, clean skin parted from clean skin, blood fresh and wet, as though it had not even tried to clot or heal.
“Father,” Wittendon said, respectfully turning the wolf general’s corpse and inspecting each wound. “Most of the marks are like those from a common dog. As for this,” he said pointing to the cut. “It appears to have been made from a weapon containing the Shining Grey.”
His father raised a bushy, black eyebrow. The rare metal was only used once every hundred years—during the Motteral Mal tournament. It was one of the few substances that could weaken, maim, or kill a Verander.
“And how,” the king said, curtly, “did he die?”
Wittendon spoke carefully. “It is an answer I can only guess at, Lord Father. I suspect a dog was ultimately responsible for the general’s death. However, it seems that prior to that, while aiding in a practice for the Motteral Mal, the general received this wound by accident. Several of the weapon tips have been painted with the Shining Grey, have they not?”
The king nodded.
“The Shining Grey would not debilitate a wolf like it might debilitate one of the Veranderen, but it could easily weaken our wolven cousins, allowing the dog beast a deadly advantage. I can see no other explanation.”
His father turned back to him. “You have a gift, my son. Perhaps it is your only gift, but at least it serves a purpose.”
Wittendon bowed, not wanting to meet his father’s eyes, not wanting to see in them the constant disapproval. It was true that Wittendon had a gift, a very small gift. Among his race—a race that lived for centuries and sometimes beyond—most were unused to the stiffened, cold corpses of the dead, and most were afraid. Wittendon was not. Wittendon had seen his mother laid out at a young age and remembered it perfectly. Though her body was dead, Wittendon had felt sure that something of her continued. Since then he had not been afraid to handle the dead; he had not been afraid to approach the pieces that remained of them.
The king turned away. “It is
unfortunate that your gift is one that tends to be useful only in times of bad news.” The king’s copper eyes burned with the power of the great sun. “I will not have the leader of my wolf force humiliated at the claw of a common dog. Find the beast. And if, in battle, my wolf general has destroyed it, find the creature most connected to the dog. The murder of a wolf is punishable by death. It matters not to me whose death it must be.”
Wittendon bowed, kissed his father’s fist once more, and retreated just as an enormous, deeply scarred wolf named Wolrijk entered.
Once away from the king’s chambers, Wittendon sighed and sent for a traveling cloak and several strips of pheasant, wondering where to begin.
A renegade dog would have very few friends and nowhere to go. It could flee to the human lands—fenced towns splattered with dirty streets and scanty huts. Or it could appeal to its own kind. Neither option seemed feasible. For a dog to enter a human city was to accept a frail human hand of help while being ostracized by its own stronger clans. And for the humans to extend help was a risky move. Yet for a dissident dog to be connected to other dogs seemed even more impossible. The humans, at least, were sentimental and reckless. The dogs, on the other hand, were careful and fiercely driven by the needs of the pack. While it was true that the dogs’ strength and powers of communication were superior to many of the other races, the dogs knew that the king could destroy them. And they would never allow the needs of one dog to topple the needs of the pack.
Wittendon belted a copper canteen around his waist. He would start with the western woods surrounding the human villages. Difficult or not, the dog must be found. And if it was dead, another connected to it must be apprehended—relative, friend, or unfortunate acquaintance. On this, the law was clear. Returning without a criminal would humiliate the rules of the Veranderen nobility. It would communicate to both human and dog that a wolf could be killed without deadly consequences. That was a message his father would never allow.
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