That Way Lies Camelot

by Janny Wurts

  Woodbiter endured his elf-friend's gaze for the span of a heartbeat, then whined, rolled, and showed the pale fur of his throat to appease her aggressive mood. **Hunt alone,** he sent. When the Huntress neither answered nor forbade him, he sprang up and slunk off into the forest.

  Skyfire hammered her fist into soft spring soil and flopped with her chin on her elbows. The not right feeling persisted. Though she tried, she could find no name for it. This was no anticipation of danger, like the moment when the prong-horn's charge caught a spear-thrower off guard. Neither was it a feeling of threat, like the packs of human hunters who sometimes wandered too near the holt. Skyfire twisted two grass stems between her fingers. Decidedly, this was not even the faintly giddy feeling one got after eating too many dreamberries. She frowned at the brook, and watched the moon's broken reflection frown back. She could not say why she was here, lying idle in new grass when her belly growled with hunger. Well after nightfall, the tribe would be wondering why their chieftess did not appear to lead the hunt. Yet Skyfire made no effort to rise. She would not take up her spear. Some instinct as deep as earth urged her to linger.

  She plucked a grass blade and chewed the stem, only to spit it out because it tasted sour. In the stream the shape of the moon rippled on as if nothing was wrong. The peepers shrilled in a forest that seemed touched by strange, waiting silence; not the quiet of approaching predators, but a sort of stillness that caused the hair to prickle. In that moment, with discontent sharp as a thorn in her side, Skyfire first heard the singing.

  The melody touched her first, high and sweet and filled with the vitality of growing things. Skyfire tilted her head, tense and listening. She sniffed the air, but smelled no taint of humans. Belatedly she noticed that this song held none of the grunts which passed for language among the five-fingers. Perhaps in sound, perhaps in sending, this singer used no words at all, only notes laid out in brightness and light. Each lilted phrase filled Skyfire with a pure and innocent joy. Without quite knowing she had moved, she found herself on her feet. The song drew her as nothing in memory had ever done before.

  Only the sternest habits of survival made her remember the spear, bow, and quiver lying in the grass. She paused to gather them up, though the delay made her ache. The sweaty fur garment she had shed no longer seemed important, so she abandoned it. Clad only in thin leather tunic and cross-laced boots, Skyfire slipped into the dark of the forest.

  As only an elf or a wolf could move, she followed the elusive song through thicket and draw. Yet the singer eluded her. Between the black boles of oaks, over ferny hummocks and marshy hollows, he walked and left no marks. Neither branch nor briar nor deadfall seemed to slow him. Huntress Skyfire shook her bright hair in annoyance. She was considered a fine tracker, lacking only the nose of a wolf to unravel the most difficult trails. She hurried, silent and adept and forest-cunning, and determined as never before; but somehow, the uncanny song caused her native grace to abandon her. Scratched on twigs, scraped on thorns, she felt clumsy as a five-finger, and as foolish. Yet to stop or even slow down was to lose the music that even now filtered through a copse of saplings. The melody ran flawless as stream water, describing delight that bordered the edges of pain. Skyfire ran. Breathless, she twisted around tree branches and half tripped on roots and vines. Still the singer evaded her. His melody drew relentlessly farther ahead, until at length it became no more than the memory of beauty, the fading essence of dream.

  Skyfire cursed and stumbled to her knees in moss. Tired, confused, and even hotter than before, she rubbed at scratches on her spear arm. The discontent which had troubled her earlier intensified, became a disappointment near to sickness. She jabbed at soft earth with her spear-butt. The silence, the terrible absence of song, left her aching in a way that knew no remedy.

  Around her, night had begun to fail. Gray light shone between branches and new leaves, and birds awakened singing. Soon humans might be abroad, dangerous to any elf who foolishly stayed in the open. For once Skyfire did not care. Crossly she threw herself prone, her chin cupped in her fists. She did not move as the world grew golden with dawn, nor when the sun speared slanting through the boughs, striping her shoulders with warmth. Furious at her own folly, yet helpless to free herself of yearning, she lay and frowned until her head ached and her thoughts spun with hunger. The music pulled at her still. The memory did not fade before the now awareness of her wolf-sense; notes spilled and echoed in her mind until she wanted to weep, bereft.

  Woodbiter found her at midday. The wolf had fared well on his hunt and his belly was gorged. He had dragged his kill beneath a fallen log, then urinated upon the place to mark it; the cache was not far, and still fresh. Yet meat would not assuage the emptiness left by the singer. Skyfire refused her wolf-friend's offer.

  The animal sensed her discontent. He licked her eyelids in commiseration, and finally curled in the shade to sleep.

  Skyfire left him there. Irritable and alone, she arose and retraced her trail from the night before. The path of her run was clear, a swath of torn leaves and twigs freshly snapped. Many times she had stepped carelessly on soft soil and left the imprint of her booted foot. Although she searched and sniffed, she found nothing of the singer. His melody haunted her. Once when she might have stopped to spear fish, his memory stung her haplessly onward.

  In time, the daystar lowered and the birds flew to roost. Exhausted, and hopelessly in thrall to the singer's dream, Skyfire stumbled and fell. She caught herself short of a bang on the head; and there, between her hands, found the impression of a bare foot. The track had four toes, clearly made by an elf. Yet Skyfire knew at once that none of her own tribe had trodden here. Precisely between the hollow of toes and heel, there bloomed a flower entirely out of phase with the season.

  Astonishment overwhelmed Skyfire, and her breath caught. For no reason she could name, she knelt by the blossom and wept. Then, as if the release of emotion had snapped the dream's hold on her mind, she acknowledged the sending from the holt which had sought her for some hours. Most oddly, it was Twigleaf, the youngest cub in the tribe, whose call reached her first. Skyfire returned reassurance of her well-being. Then, with weariness similar to the feeling of waking from dreams of escaped prey, she rose and returned to lead the hunt.

  * * *

  For an eight-of-days, the chieftess ran with the pack as always. The rough way of the Wolfriders and the song of their mounts as they howled before the hunt stirred her, made her heart lift and the blood race through her veins. Only now the challenge of survival seemed somehow less keen. The lilt of the song stirred within her at odd moments, like an echo never entirely lost. And as was her habit in the old days of Two-Spear's strife, Skyfire wandered often. Perhaps not by chance, she found her way back to the clearing. There, yet again, she waited for something she could not name.

  This time clouds shadowed her vigil. Rainfall slicked her hair on her shoulders and dripped coldly down her back and groin. She shook herself like a wolf, licking irritably at the runoff. Long hours she listened between the patter of droplets over leaves, but no song reached her save the shrilling of peepers in the damp and the puddles. Shivering, saddened, but never quite miserable enough to leave, Skyfire finally dozed.

  The song returned in her dreams. Notes tripped and spilled between thorn brakes where no rain fell, and the forest lay dappled with sun like high summer. In dream, Skyfire leaped up and pursued. The song flowed like sending, and images swept through her sleeping mind. Though the singer used no words, his music spoke of other times, of taller, fairer elves than those who ran with the wolves. They wore beautiful, many-colored clothing. Beyond them Skyfire beheld strange dwellings, then stars sprinkled uncountably across blackness deeper than night. She saw suns that blistered her eyes, and moons silvery as the trinkets that humans cut from mussel shells. And yet there was sorrow beneath the beauty of this song. Woven through the strangeness and wonder of the images lay a memory of cold, like death. In the dream, Skyfire started. The stars an
d the moons abruptly vanished, and dark against the silver-ice light of new dawn, she beheld the singer.

  He stood before her, clad in grey. A wolf of the same hue lolled at his side. The eyes of wolf and rider were eerily alike, deep and light as mist. But the elf-singer's hair was black, hanging tangled and unkempt down his back.

  Convinced she had awakened, Skyfire surged to her feet, all grace and speed and anger. Nobody, wolf or elf, ever sneaked up on her like that, far less a stranger in territory hunted by her tribe and pack.

  Yet even as she raised her spear and called challenge, the singer and wolf both vanished. Skyfire checked. The dream dissolved around her and she woke in reality, to chilly rain and daylight. Her breath came painfully to her chest. On the ground, where in the dream the singer's feet had trodden, the grass grew sere and dry as autumn. A single oak leaf lay caught between the stems, not the new soft green of spring, but coloured red as blood.

  Skyfire gasped. She brushed the dried grass with her hands and shivered. This singer of dreams was surely part throwback. The magic of the old ones ran deep in him.

  * * *

  The storm had split into broken clouds, and the leaves dripped sullenly by the time Skyfire returned to the holt. Most of the tribe lay in tree hollows, sleeping, but a few of the young ones tussled like wolf cubs in the shade. One just barely an adult watched over their play, her hands weaving baskets out of rush.

  'Been stalking black-neck deer?' Sapling taunted. Her fingers stilled on her handiwork as she tossed back pale hair. 'Or maybe something bigger than a deer stalked you? Looks like you spent the night holed up in a thicket.'

  Skyfire bent and snatched a rush. 'Close.'

  'Barren hunt?' asked Sapling, quick enough to grab back her stolen green. Such teasing had been part of her life since she was a cub.

  The chieftess shook her head, but the ravvit she had caught and eaten on her way home had not left her sated. The dreams and the singer were driving her to distraction. Even her wolf noticed her ribs, as if she was gaunt from the season of white cold. As Skyfire reached the tree which held her sleeping hollow, she sensed the concern of Pine, who sometimes lay with her after the hunt. She never confided in him, but the fact that she was troubled had been noticed. Yet Pine's embrace offered no comfort. Chilled and confused as Skyfire was, she did not wish the warmth of a lovemate. A strange elf walked the forest, one who belonged to no pack, and who owned depths not seen in cubs born for many generations. He was Wolfrider, surely enough, but different in ways not easily understood. Skyfire sensed trouble. If she told the rest of the tribe of the song-dreams and their maker, the wolf in them might precipitate an outcome that could not be controlled. Though pack ways and pack actions served well in matters of survival, Skyfire struggled to balance instinct against a drive that ran deeper than curiosity. She realized she must track down and confront this singer without help from the other Wolfriders.

  The limbs which led to her hollow were smoothed with many climbings. Skyfire pulled herself upward out of habit, her mind preoccupied with unfamiliar concepts. Against her nature, she must plan, for the tribe must not suffer for her pursuit of the singer. She must lead the hunt through the night, and then in the gray hours before daybreak, slip away.

  The hollow in the tree was dim and invitingly cool, but Skyfire did not sleep. Curled in her furs, her bright hair wound damply over her shoulders, she wondered how an elf could track a shadow. For the singer was shadow, a figure spun of dreams. In the depths of his gray-silver eyes she could easily become lost.

  * * *

  The mild weather of spring quickly gave way before the darker foliage and the stronger sun of summer. Like most elves, Skyfire abandoned use of her sleeping hollow altogether, preferring to curl up like a wolf in the dappled shade of a thicket, her body against cool earth. But while the winds stilled, and prey grew fat and plentiful, and the Wolfriders became sleek with easy hunting, their chieftess grew lean with muscle. After the nightly kill, she ran, until she could traverse the dense forest in silence at speed. She learned not to thrash through briars, but to twist and duck and dodge through the narrowest of openings without slackening stride. She practiced leaping over streams, from rock to fallen log, to banks treacherous with moss. Her feet became very sure; for the first time, Woodbiter had trouble keeping up.

  ** Gray-muzzle,** she teased once, as the two of them lay panting in companionship in a forest glade. She licked the corner of his lips in the manner of one wolf showing affection for another.

  Woodbiter's eye rolled and met hers. **Killed deer,** he sent in wolfish reproach. Except for rank, distinctions were never made between members of the wolf-pack once a cub reached adulthood. A wolf either hunted successfully and held his own, or else failed to survive.

  Skyfire slammed playfully into her wolf-friend's shoulder and tussled, rolling over and over upon the ground. As elves, her tribe handled life with little difference. Hardship made no allowance for individuals who were not strong. Such was the way of the wild. But as Skyfire wrestled with her wolf in the midsummer heat, she thought upon the singer's dreams. For the first time, she wondered whether Timmain's sacrifice, which first mingled the blood of wolves and elves, might have been made in the hope of something more.

  * * *

  That night the hunt went well. Early on, Spearhand brought down a large buck. Then Skimmer and his wolf, Brighttail, flushed a herd of prong-horns. The Wolfriders leaped eagerly in pursuit. By the time the two moons lifted toward the zenith, there was feasting. Skyfire did not gorge on the meat with the others, but ate sparingly and wrapped a second portion to carry with her. Then, leaving her spear in Sapling's care, she tightened the strap of her quiver and settled her bow over her shoulder.

  **Going?** sent Woodbiter. He licked his bloody muzzle and raised expectant eyes.

  Skyfire returned the image of the clearing by the brook. By that the wolf understood she would spend another night running, or perhaps simply sitting by water staring at nothing. He chose to remain with his kill.

  Huntress Skyfire twisted her red hair into a braid. Aware that she prepared to embark upon another night of wandering, her tribe-mates did not ask why. Neither did they try to go along, as once before they might have. Skyfire did not explain her leaving. If a wolf-chief wanted solitude, he drove off his subordinates with snarls, not affection. Skyfire could be as fierce in defense of her wishes. No elf in the tribe cared to provoke her wrath as Two-Spear had, on the day she had challenged him for leadership.

  Yet the more distance Skyfire set between herself and the members of her tribe, the more determination deserted her. She paused, leaned against a tree, and rested her cheek against rough bark. She had heard no singing for many eights-of-days. All her practice at running and her nights of vigil had led her no closer to the strange elf than the time when the peepers called. Soon the forest would change. Frost and cold winds would strip the green from the leaves. The season of white cold would follow and the struggle for survival would force an end to her search. Recalling the marvels in the singer's dream, Skyfire clenched her teeth in frustration. Somehow she knew that if she failed, the lost feeling inside her would never be answered.

  Accordingly, she tucked her bow more comfortably across her shoulders and began to jog. Tonight she paid no attention to landmarks, but traveled without purpose or direction. She might encounter humans, or even one of the clearings where they set snares for game, but this once caution deserted her. The singer's long silence drove her, aching, to recklessness.

  Skyfire ran. The familiar paths, the known trees, the territory hunted by the wolf-pack, all fell behind. Breathless, weary, the chieftess would not rest. Deer started out of her path, and night creatures looked up from their hunting. Still she ran, while stars blinked endlessly between the leaves overhead. The earth jarred over and over against the soles of her feet, and her bowstring rasped blisters on her shoulder. Still the chieftess ran.

  Her breath came in wrenching gasps. She did not stop. Not
until her legs failed her and she tumbled headlong into old leaves. The musty smell filled her nostrils, and skeletons of veined stems caught in her hair. Skyfire rolled miserably onto her back. Her frustration skirted the edges of despair, but she was too spent even to curse.

  She could do nothing at all but lie still and listen to silence until her ears stung under the weight of it.

  In time her heart stopped hammering and her breathing slowed. Something stirred in her mind and she heard a faint drift of melody. Skyfire shut her eyes, uncertain whether her imagination might be tricking her as had happened so many times before.

  But the singing grew stronger. The melody turned and interwove like a waterfall, intricate beyond understanding. Skyfire rose up on her elbows. Longing woke within her. Feeling tears burn behind her eyelids, she pushed at last to her feet. She did not feel the protest of her tired body as, once more, she started to run. The singer's dream enfolded her senses, drew her irresistibly like a moth toward flame.

  Skyfire no longer saw trees, or the night-dark vista of forest. She ran through a waking dream of wide, open plains under cloudless sky. The stars seemed close enough to touch, and the wind held a bite of cold that burned her throat as she breathed. Scents of many descriptions filled her nostrils, intoxicating in their detail. Skyfire sniffed deeply. She realized that she ran with the senses of a wolf, even as Timmain had done generations in the past. Yet though her limbs might seem clothed in fur and her body that of a beast, still her mind was not entirely animal. The compassion, the gentleness, and the sorrow of her ancestors reverberated through her being. As she raced on four pads over the plain, she shared echoes of Timmain's thoughts.

  Then the singer's melody changed. The dream of sharing wolf-shape faded and turned deep and sad and lost. The cold deepened. Snow fell, a whirling maelstrom of flakes that smothered the memory of summer or stars. Frost cut cruelly into flesh no longer clothed in the protective pelt of the wolf. Skyfire cried out, painfully rubbing fingers that were thinner, longer, and more delicate than those she had been born with. She experienced the past suffering of the first ones, and the crippling confusion of minds accustomed only to contemplation. Terror ripped into nerves she never knew she possessed.