Prince of Wolves

by Dave Gross

  Azra was looking at my chest, where I had unconsciously drawn the wings of Desna over my heart. It’s a gesture gamblers and fugitives learn to hide in Cheliax. While the worship of Lady Luck is not strictly illegal, it’s enough excuse for the Hellknights to rough you up. When the witch saw my expression, she raised a curious eyebrow, but then she shook her head. She mimed a few gestures I couldn’t guess, but then she flexed her arms. She had surprisingly good biceps, round and bigger than my fists.

  “This is supposed to make me stronger?”

  She shrugged and nodded. At her side, her hands moved absentmindedly, and I recognized a familiar pattern: the Pathfinder hand-sign for “mending.”

  “It’s a way of healing me,” I said. “You’re a Pathfinder?”

  No, she signed emphatically.

  “Then how do you—?”

  She waved the question away and signed, You Pathfinder?

  “My boss,” I said. While I’d never joined his precious little club, he’d taught me a bunch of their secrets, probably hoping one day I’d come around and ask to be initiated. That’s probably why he’d taken me on this mad trip, too. Give old Radovan a taste of adventure, and he’ll be begging us to learn the secret handshake and wear the funny hat, or whatever it is they do at their meetings.

  All the chaos since I fell from the bridge had one good side effect: I hadn’t had to think much about the boss’s death. I wished I could believe otherwise, but there was no way he could have survived the explosion I’d seen as I fell from the bridge. It was a miracle I’d lived through my ordeal, and I was a lot tougher than he ever was. Now I was alone, hundreds of miles, maybe more than a thousand miles away from a home I never loved anyway. Everyone here thought I was some kind of monster, a devil, and they weren’t all wrong. I wasn’t going to find many friendly welcomes here. Only the boss could call on a lord of Ustalav for hospitality. I could barely speak the language.

  What was I going to do?

  Sleep, signed Azra. She gave me another drink of water.

  “I’m not sleepy,” I said.

  She cupped her hand over my eyes. It was warm if not soft. I don’t remember her taking it away.

  I must have woken a few times during the journey, because I recall images of dust drifting on narrow beams of sunlight through the cracks between the wagon panels. I remember the feet of that accursed chicken clutching at my legs, but Azra must have shortened its leash, because it didn’t roam far past my knees. I’m not sure whether that was for my protection or the chicken’s, because she had removed the shroud and lay a thick woolen blanket over me. My arms were free, but they still felt like two sticks of swollen driftwood. I could barely lift one high enough to scratch my chin, and that much effort was enough to pull me back down into dreamless sleep.

  A few times I heard voices outside the cart. I smelled fresh manure or pies baking, but usually nothing but the bare earth and moldering leaves. When the chicken pecked at me, sometimes I had the strength to kick it away. Sometimes I just got pecked. I drank water from Azra’s cupped hand when she held it to my mouth. I licked pasty gruel off a wooden spoon. I couldn’t count how many times, but it was enough that I began to hate the stuff, which tasted almost as bad going down as coming up. When I wasn’t sweating, I was freezing cold, and every time I felt I could drift off to sleep, that damned bird pecked at my feet. How long I lay in the arms of the fever, I couldn’t guess.

  The next thing I knew, I was sliding across the ground and staring up at a starry sky. Azra was dragging me across the grass on a carpet. I raised my head to see the wagon aglow in the light of a nearby campfire. The dappled donkey grazed nearby while the black chicken strutted around the campfire, practicing its tortures by pecking at the ground. I wanted to shoot it the tines, but it was easier to leave my arms by my sides and silently promise, You’ll get yours, you little pecker.

  “Where?” I asked before realizing Azra couldn’t answer until she had her hands free. I tried to sit up, but she voiced a decidedly negative “Uh!” I lay back and tried to enjoy the ride, but every bump in the ground managed to find a bruise or an open wound. I grew a little nostalgic for the earlier numbness, because now my legs felt like a couple of burlap sacks of broken glass. Every little jolt brought a pang, sometimes a shock of agony sharp enough to make me hiss.

  Mercifully, the journey was short. Azra left me at the center of a circle of flattened grass. I guessed she’d trod the area down earlier, but it was so uniform that I fancied a god had laid down a giant cup before lifting it for another sip.

  As if reading my thoughts, Azra knelt beside me and put a jar to my lips. I drank what tasted like unfermented mead, but a few seconds later I reconsidered. It tasted nothing like honey wine, but it kicked as hard as Azra’s donkey. Soon I could perceive the movement of the stars as they slid across the globe of the night sky. It wasn’t black, as I had always thought, but filled with millions of stars I had never before seen. What little space lay between them was the color of deep, clear water.

  Azra walked away from me. Tiny bells chimed at her ankles and wrists, and I heard a metallic shing as she produced a pair of starknives seemingly from the air. I’d seen those before, usually for sale by Sczarni or other wandering Varisians in open markets. They were rings of steel surrounding a central handgrip. Four triangular blades radiated outward to form an awkward but potentially deadly weapon. Most who bought them in Cheliax treated them as ornaments to hang on the wall in a lame effort to appear interested in Varisian culture. Certain true Varisians, especially their clerics of Desna, learned to wield the blades to deadly effect.

  My head turned slowly as I tried to keep her in sight. Like the stars, I felt as though I were submerged in deep water. The autumn breeze was a slow current. If I pushed my fingers against the carpet, I knew I would rise up to float toward the moon.

  Azra bent down to light a simple clay lamp. She moved on, lighting more lamps as she chimed a circle around me. A falling star distracted me once, but I think I counted twelve of those lamps. What were they for? There are twelve caverns of the moon. Or was it thirteen? That was an unlucky number in Ustalav, too, I was pretty sure. It was hard to remember all the little lessons the boss had given us about Varisian customs on the voyage from Cheliax.

  Moving my head to keep Azra in sight made me dizzy as the tails of stars whirled above us. Rather than risk another fit of nausea, I lay still and concentrated on my breathing. That was boring, so I listened for the sound of insects, but they had all died or gone to sleep. Instead I heard the faint susurrus of distant trees. The smell of their decaying leaves was faint as well, but the grass beneath me still smelled of summer.

  There she was, skipping past on the left, moving moonwise around me. Not skipping, I realized, but dancing like a farm girl propelled more by optimism than by practice. Even though her gestures looked inelegant compared with, say, the sinuous dance Malena had performed for me, the rhythm of the bells at her hands and feet was hypnotic. She raised her hands toward the sky, and when she leaped, her arms formed a crescent around the fattening moon. It winked at me as her arms passed before it, and I felt more than heard laughter as big and encompassing as the rain.

  Azra charged at me, her knives flashing over my chest. Wrists crossed, she formed the wings of a butterfly over my heart with her starknives. An instant later, she danced away toward one of the lamps flickering at the edge of the circle. She passed her hand over the flame to put it out. I heard her humming deep in her chest. If it was a tune, I couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t melodic, but there was a natural music in it, like the rhythm of waves or the wind before a storm.

  She rushed back at me again, once more crossing blades over my heart. This time I felt a tiny prickling on my chest, as if someone had touched me with a needle, although I didn’t think she’d cut me with the starknives. From the point of impact, a faint blissful sensation spread throughout my body, withdrawing as she danced backward. It was gone by the time she extinguished the next
lamp.

  Each time she returned, she made the same gesture, and I felt a little more prickling on my skin. It wasn’t painful, exactly, and that same ebbing pleasure followed. Each time the feeling faded, I felt a throb of vague despair. I began to dread what would happen to me when she returned from the last flame. Time slowed, and the sky retreated.

  It occurred to me that Azra might not be healing me. Maybe she had promised the villagers that she would rid them of the monster in a prescribed ritual. Even if I had the strength to resist, I decided, I wouldn’t bother. With the boss dead and no friends worth counting, I might as well be buried in the soil of my forebears. Part of my mind was startled at such gloomy thoughts. That wasn’t like me. I wondered whether I was drunker than I realized.

  The moon withdrew behind the clouds. In the smallest corner of my eye I saw Azra bending over the last flame, and then it died. The world went silent, even the autumn air holding its fingers still in the trees. I heard only Azra’s footsteps running closer. She leaped atop me, her hands slamming my chest. Enervating radiance consumed the last of my strength, and all the lush dark night dissolved into death-white light.

  I awoke naked but for a blanket she’d laid upon me. By the position of the moon, I reckoned I had been unconscious only an hour or so. The carpet was still beneath me, but Azra and all her lamps were gone.

  My stomach growled as I sat up. Apart from hunger, I felt better. Actually, I felt great. The splints were gone from my legs, so I stood up. Not even a wobble. I wrapped the blanket around my waist like a bathhouse towel and walked back to the campfire.

  The donkey shied away at my approach, leaving me room to warm myself. Azra had banked the fire, but she had left a small stack of firewood nearby. I added a couple of logs and poked the fire with an iron rod I found nearby. Azra seemed to carry everything she needed in this wagon. I wondered whether she had a home. More likely she was a traveling healer, although one with a lot more power than the hedge witches you could sometimes find in the Long Market. Whatever spell she’d cast on me, it had worked wonders.

  I dropped the blanket to inventory my bits and parts in the light of the campfire. The pitchfork wound was barely visible on my thigh, and there was only a pale mark on my hand where the crossbow bolt had pierced my palm. My thumbs felt as good as new, although I now had a ring of scar tissue on each one. It was hard to complain about that. I’d rarely received magical healing, and never for free.

  Or maybe Azra expected something in return for her ministrations. That was a question I’d have to ask soon.

  My empty stomach complained again, this time loud enough to disturb the donkey. There had to be oats and dried fruit in the wagon. With some water and a pot, I could make something better than that nasty paste Azra had been feeding me. I thought all country women learned how to cook, but she was obviously an exception. I went to search the wagon and realized I had not seen my nemesis, the black chicken. Suspecting an ambush, I checked the roof of the wagon. Nothing there. Then I found the leash trailing the wagon’s door toward the other side of the wagon.

  “Hiding, eh?” I pulled the string and heard a squawk.

  I was feeling strong enough for a bit of revenge, and to hell with gruel for supper.

  Realizing Azra might be annoyed that I’d roasted her only chicken, I didn’t eat it all. That was harder than you’d think, because I was famished. Fortunately, there was a sack of potatoes in the wagon. I rubbed four them in a little olive oil and salt I found among Azra’s stores. I had just finished burying them under the embers and had adjusted my makeshift skirt when I heard a startled cry.

  Azra stood at the edge of the light holding a basket full of clothes. The garments she wore were damp, and her previously unruly hair was clean and combed back to reveal her features. Apart from the look of stupefaction, she was prettier than I’d originally thought. Something about her freckles attracted the moonlight. I know how stupid that sounds, but that’s how it looked.

  Idiot! she signed, gazing around at the mess of black feathers I’d left while plucking my throttled foe.

  What? I signed back without thinking. I added, “I saved you half.” There was no need for me to use the finger-speech, but the boss and I always used it to remain silent, usually when we were hiding or spying on someone. It felt strange to answer my half of the conversation aloud.

  She sighed and dropped the basket, shaking her head in disbelief.

  You know nothing, she signed.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  Chicken eats demon, she signed.

  “I’m not a demon,” I said.

  Demon inside you.

  I almost corrected her, but then I realized I myself had no reason to believe it was a devil and not a demon that had spliced itself into my family tree. In Cheliax, where summoned devils serve and advise the ruling family, everyone assumed my heritage was infernal, not abyssal. I had never questioned that assumption before.

  “Listen,” I said. “I appreciate your help, but there’s a difference between real healing—for which I’m very grateful—and superstition about demon-eating chickens.”

  Listen, she signed with an emphatic hoot. Standing across the fire from her, I finally saw what was wrong with her mouth. Her tongue had been cut out, leaving only a ragged pink lump at the back of her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, thinking more about the circumstances of her mutilation than the issue at hand. Why had someone cut out her tongue? Because she was a witch, I reckoned. And then worse possibilities came to mind, the sort of thing that can happen to any woman who doesn’t do what the wrong man wants. I felt a sudden wave of sympathy.

  It took some time for her to explain. Sign-talk is not exactly a proper language, so she often had to resort to mime for words for which she knew no sign. And she was still plenty angry, so it was hard to catch it all, especially when she had to sign out words letter by letter. Her Taldane spelling needed work, although I knew better than to tell her so. At last I understood most of what had happened to me since the fall from the bridge.

  I had wondered why Azra had not simply killed me back at the village when the villagers so obviously wanted to do just that. It turns out they had not initially meant to kill me but just to bury me. They’d thought I was already dead when a couple of the local boys fished me out of the river. When they saw my spurs and the other signs of my fiendish heritage, they decided I was a witch or a demon. Burying me face down, thumbs tied behind my back, with a garlic poultice in my mouth, was their way of making sure I would not come back to haunt them as the “dead undead,” the worst kind of evil spirit they had around here. Once they felt me move inside the coffin, they realized I was the “live undead,” the kind of monster with whom they’d usually negotiate. In their panic, they decided the distinction wasn’t important since they’d already offended me by putting me in the coffin. Thus, the pyre.

  Azra had just arrived in the village, which she visited a couple of times every year. As I’d guessed, she was a sort of itinerant healer, wise woman, and apparently a tinker, judging from the tools in her wagon. When she saw me, she had tried to catch me inside a magic circle. When that didn’t work, she began to doubt I was a demon after all. She cast a spell to take a good look inside me, if I understood her signs correctly. She didn’t explain exactly what she saw there, but whatever it was, she decided to heal me instead of kill me.

  The chicken was a gift from the villagers. He was meant to peck out my evil while I slept. I was pretty sure we were having some translation difficulty at this point. “Do you mean my sickness?”

  No, she signed. Your demon.

  “All right,” I conceded. “But I’m not possessed. My mother was hellspawn. I have a little devil in me.”

  She raised her eyes toward the sky in exasperation. She was definitely prettier now, whether because of her bath or some effect of that dance she had used to heal me. The way she focused her attention on me while we argued made me keenly aware that I was hungry for more
than roast chicken. I remembered a stupid line that had worked for me before.

  “Maybe you’d like a little devil in you?” I dropped the blanket and held out a hand.

  Her angry expression collapsed for a second as she gaped at me. Sometimes I get that. I like to keep fit. Perhaps there was a way for me to repay her after all.

  She made a flicking gesture with one hand, and a silver glint shot off of one of her rings and stung me on the chin.

  “Ow!” I said. I’d gotten no for an answer before, and I knew how to take it. “Sorry, that was a clumsy—Ow!”

  She stung me again, this time much lower than my chin.

  “All right, all right!” I grabbed the blanket and covered my most tender targets. “It was only a suggestion.”

  She chased me around the fire, stinging me in between angry gestures of dirty, damned, demon until a lump of embers exploded from the campfire with a terrific report. The wagon rocked slightly, and the donkey shied away from it. Azra and I both stopped cold, staring at the fire and the pulpy half of an over-baked potato sliding slowly down the side of the wagon.

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  Chapter Nine

  Lacunae

  It is my sincerest hope that you were spared the acquaintance of Count Galdana’s nephew during your visit to Willowmourn. His behavior since my awakening has been, if anything, even more offensive than during our ill-fated journey from Caliphas.

  Upon his return from Kavapesta an hour before sunset, Casomir made no inquiry whatever about my condition. At first this indifference seemed a blessing, for it gave me ample time to return the mysterious riffle scrolls to their place beside the hidden sword. When curiosity caused me to take it upon myself to request a conference, Felix returned with his master’s refusal unadorned with excuse. After preparing a fire in the hearth and lighting the library lamps, the butler left with a promise to bring me supper an hour later.

  The possible explanations for Casomir’s indifference were easy to weigh. That he did not treasure my company was obvious. That the affairs of the manor and Kavapesta occupied his thoughts was possible. That he wished to avoid the many questions that churned in my mind, however, seemed the most probable explanation.