Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  “You can’t play the harp,” Raulin said gruffly.

  “Then I guess I won’t be playing it any less.”

  Raulin’s relieved smile was all Jago could’ve asked for and he managed a small one of his own.

  “Here,” Raulin wrapped the fingers of Jago’s good hand around a warm mug, “drink this while I bandage.”

  Jago took a cautious sip, recognized the bitter brew as a painkiller from their emergency kit, and relaxed.

  When Raulin saw Jago actually drinking the potion, he turned his attention to the mangled hand. The great cat’s claws had ripped through skin, and flesh, and hooked down into the tendons. Several of the small bones had been displaced and one knuckle barely remained attached. Shreds of tissue were white with frostbite for the hand had lain half buried in snow. Miraculously, most major blood vessels seemed intact. Ignoring Jago’s groans, Raulin rebuilt what he could and wrapped the whole tightly in clean linen. It was a better field dressing than any he’d had time to do during the war. He appreciated the irony that experience gained in such wholesale slaughter had twice now come to Jago’s aid. Not that this in any way compared to the brindle.

  “You know,” he said, tying off the end, “when your head starts working again, this is going to hurt like Chaos.”

  “It already does.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “If it can hurt, it can heal. Can you move your fingers?”

  The fingers moved a little although Jago turned gray with pain during the attempt.

  “What happened?” he asked, just managing to keep the scream from breaking through.

  Raulin laid Jago’s hand gently in his lap. “Well, it’s my guess, they didn’t have Crystal bound as tightly as they thought ’cause when we went down those cats started to burn. Think you can stand? Your clothes get wet from sitting in melting snow and you’re going to be a lot worse off.”

  Jago remembered not to nod. “Yeah. I think so.”

  With an arm around Raulin’s shoulder, Jago got slowly to his feet and stood swaying until the world steadied, then the two of them made their way over to the sleigh.

  “Probably a good thing you’d already gone out,” Raulin continued, “because the smell of those cats burning . . . Anyway, I flopped over and played dead.” His voice grew grim and much colder than the winter night. “I could still hear what they did to Crystal.”

  “She lives.”

  Jago turned to face Lord Death who walked at his other side. “I know.” The bond between Crystal and himself had not broken.

  “They dragged her off. I saw where they entered the mountain.” Raulin had either not heard his brother or had assumed the words were directed to him. “And we’re going after her as soon as you’re steady on your feet.”

  “The two of us against a mountain full of wer?” Jago asked as they reached the sleigh and Raulin released him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Should be interesting.”

  The smiles they exchanged came from a lifetime of standing together. Some things got done regardless of the odds; this was one of them.

  Raulin brushed the clinging snow off his brother’s back and helped him into his huge fur overcoat. Jago, who’d just begun to notice a creeping chill, sighed thankfully and sank down on the front of the sleigh.

  He watched Raulin strip their gear to bare essentials, his grip on the world not yet strong enough to help. “What about you?”

  Raulin snorted and pulled his scarf down off his throat. Almost invisible in the beard stubble were four punctures, two on each side of his windpipe. “Teeth had hardly touched,” he said, “when the cat started to burn and lost interest. I got off light.”

  “Only because he ignores the rest of the damage.”

  “He what!”

  Lord Death nodded and Jago whirled on Raulin who stared at his brother, completely confused by the sudden outburst.

  “Open your coat!”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Raulin sighed and slowly unhooked the fasteners. Under his coat, the clothing he’d been wearing hung in tatters. Under his clothing, eight angry, red lines marked where Hela’s claws had torn through to skin.

  “Only scratches, I swear.” He tried to close the coat, but Jago glared it back open.

  “Get me the emergency kit.”

  “Look . . .”

  “Get it!”

  He got it, then stood almost still as, one-handed, Jago pulled bits of cloth from the cuts, all at least a quarter inch deep and most already looking pink and inflamed. Two started bleeding sluggishly again as the scab holding the remains of Raulin’s shirt inside the wound came free.

  “Cat scratches,” Lord Death said, as Jago reached for the roll of linen, “often become infected. You’d better disinfect those.”

  Jago nodded thoughtfully and reached instead for the bottle of raw alcohol.

  “Now hold it, what’re you going to do with that?”

  “What do you think?” Jago asked, pouring some of the liquid on a cloth balanced on his knee. “That mess has to be cleaned.’”

  “Not with that stuff, it doesn’t.” Raulin backed away, but Jago grabbed a corner of his coat.

  “Knock me over,” he warned, “and I’ll have a relapse.”

  Raulin sullenly stopped moving.

  Jago flipped the coat open again and wiped at the scoring with the alcohol laden cloth. “Stop squirming. Cat scratches often become infected.”

  “Says . . . CHAOS! . . . who?”

  “Lord Death.”

  “When did he become a . . . DAMMIT JAGO! . . . healer?”

  “I am the Great Healer,” said Lord Death quietly. “Mortals come to me when all other healers have failed.”

  “What did he say?’” Raulin could tell by Jago’s expression that the Mother’s son had answered the question himself.

  “He’s expounding philosophy. If you’d stop dancing away, this’d go faster and we could start after Crystal.”

  Raulin growled an inarticulate curse but stood motionless while Jago finished.

  Lord Death watched Jago’s ministrations with a number of emotions warring in his breast. He needed Raulin reasonably healthy to rescue Crystal, but he resented the time spent on healing when every moment Crystal stayed with the wer put her in greater danger. He hated the thought that these mortals could attack the wer without his help and he could do little without theirs. And a very small part of him enjoyed Raulin’s pain.

  A linen bandage soon covered Raulin from armpits to waist. Although exposed flesh rippled with goose-bumps, he only shrugged his coat closed. Putting on freezing cold clothes underneath it would do more harm than good at this point. A fire would draw the wer. The small campstove threw heat only to the cooking surface; not enough to warm clothing.

  “I’ll be okay,” he answered Jago’s silent question, bending to complete the packs. “The coat’s warm enough for fighting.”

  Jago nodded, there not being much else he could do, and in a little while Raulin helped him into his pack. He tried to ignore Lord Death, whose patience appeared to be growing short.

  “He won’t need that,” Lord Death snapped as Raulin settled his own pack and loaded the crossbow.

  “Why not?” Jago asked, waving Raulin quiet.

  “Because I will lead you to Crystal on paths the wer do not walk.”

  “You?”

  “What’s he saying?” Raulin demanded.

  “He says you don’t need the crossbow. That he’ll lead us to Crystal on paths the wer don’t walk.”

  “He will?” Raulin turned over the idea. Lord Death could see the wer, but the wer couldn’t see him. Jago could follow his direction and he, Raulin, could follow Jago. “It might work.” He unloaded the bow and hung it from his pack by
the quiver, out of the way but near to hand. His brow furrowed. “Ask him if . . .”

  “He can hear you,” Jago interrupted.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Raulin straightened and spoke where Jago pointed. “If you can get in and out of there without being seen, why do you need us?”

  “Tell your brother,” Lord Death said to Jago, “that I cannot carry Crystal if it comes to that.” He paused and fought to keep anything at all from showing on his face or in his voice as he added, “He can.”

  * * *

  Crystal sat alone in the cavern for what seemed a very long time. She ran her fingers lightly over the band on her head and decided it was the same material as the rod. It fit snugly, almost as if it had been made for her head. It was a power binding of some kind, of that she was certain. Tentatively she reached in and directed the healing that still went on. Her power responded.

  Cautiously, she manipulated and tested and discovered that everything appeared to be under her control. Her shields had remained up and not even Zarsheiy was missing. That surprised her, for there had been nothing containing the fire goddess when the cats had burned. Nor could she understand why Zarsheiy stayed so silent; this situation should’ve called forth scathing remarks.

  She’s sulking.

  Crystal recognized Tayja’s voice.

  The link between you and her and Avreen was so strong that she found herself back behind the barriers before she could even think of freedom.

  Avreen worked with me?

  Of course, child, you’ve given her ample reason to stay.

  Crystal felt herself flush. Raulin. She sighed and wondered if Raulin realized they had more of an audience each night than Jago, who patiently killed time by the fire. She touched the places the brothers held in her heart, knew they continued to live, and reached out with her power to call them.

  Pain.

  Screaming and writhing, she clutched at her head. Hot knives drove into her brain. A vise tightened and crushed. Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

  “So you have discovered what the cap can do.”

  Gasping, she scrambled back into a sitting position, her fingers tearing at the bands.

  The old wer who stood over her smiled. “You cannot remove it,” he said, “and if you try to use power against it, or to augment your strength, or in any way it finds your actions aggressive,” he shrugged, “you now know what will happen. The wizards,” his lips curled back in a snarl of pure hate, “built their devices of torment well.” He flicked a hoary nail against the cap. “With this they could keep their fellows captive, healthy, whole, and helpless. You cannot use your powers to escape.”

  Hoarse from screaming, Crystal rasped, “They made this to use on each other?”

  He spread his hands. “Who else has power to trap? As the wizards grew more powerful, their only adversaries were each other. Did you not destroy the only other one of your kind?”

  “That was different!”

  “He is still dead.”

  “I’m not like other wizards!”

  “I see no difference.”

  Crystal worked her weight up the wall until she stood looking down at him. Small things hurt, but even her nose had begun to function again. She could smell the heavy animal scent of both the caverns and the wer who faced her. Basically, she was whole. For now. “Why,” she asked with dignity, “am I alive?”

  “Now? Specifically?” He slid his hands beneath the loose poncho he wore, a piece of clothing easy to slip out of in wolf form. His smile showed a broken tooth and dripped with malice. “We’ve waited many generations to catch a wizard. To visit on you some of the torment your kind laid on us. When we escaped during the Doom, we stole what toys we could. One brought you low. One you wear.”

  “But I had nothing to do with your creation . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter!” He spat the words. “You are wizard!”

  For an instant a craggy gray wolf stood before her, its lean and hollow flanks jutting from the poncho. Pale eyes blazed with rage. Then the old man stood there again, breathing heavily through his nose, obviously fighting to keep his emotions under control.

  “It’s been thousands of years,” Crystal said, shaken, “why do you still hate wizards so?”

  “You see,” he snarled, “but you do not understand.” He turned and began to walk across the cavern. “Follow. I will make you understand. And then you will begin to pay.”

  * * *

  The wolf on guard at the entrance to the wers’ tunnels reclined, head on paws, half asleep. Young and complacent, sure the wer were the only predators in the valley, the attack took him by surprise. In the brief struggle, he flicked into his manshape and Jago slammed him behind the ear with his dagger hilt. As he fell, he became wolf again.

  “We can’t tie him,” Jago pointed out, grabbing him by the forelegs and dragging him away. “If he changes, the rope will slice his hands off.”

  “Do you care?” Raulin asked, remembering the sounds of heavy feet and fists pounding against Crystal.

  “He’s just a kid . . .”

  Raulin sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”

  They blocked the tunnel, hoping more to slow the guard than to stop him entirely.

  “What if he doesn’t try to follow and just goes for help.”

  “This is the only way into the valley from the mountain,” Lord Death explained, eyeing the rock pile impatiently. “If he goes for help, it will take him some time and accomplish the same thing as far as we are concerned.”

  They advanced into the mountain, their eyes adapting in the darkness enough to pick out the darker shadows that marked companions. Moving as quietly as they could, Raulin followed Jago who followed Lord Death who made no noise at all.

  Not a great deal of time had passed when Jago flattened against the rock. Raulin mirrored the move a second later. They’d come to a fork, one branch black and deserted, the other lit—although the torches burned so far apart they gave a twilight effect at best. No sounds came from the inhabited passage but given the freshness of the torches, wer could not be far.

  Lord Death walked forward, passed the torch, and disappeared into the gloom.

  The brothers waited. And waited.

  Raulin wrinkled his nose against the overpowering odor of pine. He picked a crushed needle out of his mustache and fought the urge to sneeze. Not many walking pine trees in these parts he’d pointed out when Lord Death had suggested they hide their scent.

  And there are no mortals at all, Lord Death had pointed out in turn. The wer will react less to the smell of pine than the smell of meat.

  Meat. Raulin hadn’t wanted to ask.

  Jago started as Lord Death stepped out of air in front of him. The movement jarred his hand and he bit back a curse.

  “I suggest you keep it quieter,” Lord Death warned. “We are reaching the inhabited sections of the mountain and must go carefully. Come, this section is safe.”

  They passed the first torch and came to a small cave angling back into the rock. Faintly, over the smell of pine clotting their noses, came the musky scent of cat. The brothers froze.

  Lord Death, no longer sensing them following, stopped, turned, and glared. “I said it was safe. They will not wake for some time, I have touched their dreams.”

  His mouth close to Raulin’s ear, Jago repeated Lord Death’s words.

  As they moved on, Raulin shook his head. Dreams touched by Death, he thought. Nice.

  * * *

  The old wer led Crystal to a small cavern spilling soft lamplight into the tunnel; a higher level of technology than any she’d yet seen. Jason’s wolfshape lay across the door, not on guard for his attention was turned within. When he caught their scent, he whirled, rising into manshape with the move. Gray paste covered his arrow wound.

  “What are you doing here, wizard?” he growle
d.

  “I brought her, Jason.”

  “Why?”

  “To show her why we hate.”

  A whimper from the cavern and Jason’s hands clenched into fists. His golden eyes filled with fury “Show herrrr.” The last came out more growl than word as the great black wolf trembled with the effort not to attack.

  Another whimper spun him back into the cavern.

  “Go.” The old wer pointed and Crystal stepped forward.

  The cavern, the size of a large bedchamber, held a low table and a stool, rough shelves cut into the rock walls and filled with carvings of wer in all their shapes, and a large box bed, heaped high with furs. The lamp sat on the table, close by the bed. An ancient woman knelt by the box and crooned, soft and comforting, too low to be heard more than a few feet away. The young woman on the bed was obviously in labor.

  “In the early months,” the old wer said softly in Crystal’s ear, “the mother’s changing does no harm, but after the wolf is ready to be born she must stay in womanshape to carry the mortal half to term. If she changes, the child and usually the mother as well dies. This is the torment the wizards gave us; strong emotion sets off the change outside of our control. Surprise, anger . . .” He paused and the woman on the bed whimpered again as a contraction rippled her swollen belly. “. . . pain.”

  “Then why . . .”

  “Our lives are long and in wolfshape the urge to mate is very strong. Although wer did not ask to be created, neither do wer wish to die. Do you wonder why we hate you?”

  “The cats . . .”

  “Are more indolent by nature so their time is a little less hard. They have three males for every female. We have five.”

  Even as Crystal recognized the singsong cadence of the crooning, she saw the trance it was meant to maintain fail.

  “Jason?” The young woman’s eyes tried to focus as the pain pulled her out of her hypnotic state.

  He poked his nose into her hand and she clutched at it, then stroked the cheek of a worried young man.

  To Crystal’s wizard sight the fingers of the hand seemed shorter than they should and the russet hair grew too thickly across the back.