Firekeeper grunted agreement. The calloused bottoms of her feet were as tough as most shoe leather. She worried less about what she might step upon than what would grab hold of her exposed skin. Then she saw the ravens, and she forgot any worry for herself.
They perched high above the ground on the limb of an oak, the trunk of which was well-swaddled in the green briar. What was disturbing was that the limb in question was also well swaddled, the viney growth stretched out along it like some vegetable serpent. The ravens were caught within this serpent's coils. One about body and chest, the other encased to the head.
"I smell blood," Blind Seer said. "Fresh."
Firekeeper nodded, already assessing how she might climb that tree without leaving too much of her own blood behind. She didn't like how the ravens had been snared. They were too clever to have landed in this mess. How might they have been lured?
Now, however, was not the time for conjecture. The raven's call had been coming faint and fainter, still at those horribly regular intervals. Lovable, Firekeeper thought. She was the one caught only to her midsection. The other then, so horribly enshrouded, must be Bitter.
"Scout," Firekeeper said to Blind Seer. "I will see if I can get them free. You will be no help in that matter, but you can keep anything from coming upon us without us knowing."
'Take care," Blind Seer said, "as will I. We do no good for any if we lose both ourselves and the ravens in trying to set them free."
Firekeeper had located a broad section of tree branch, still thick with limp leaves. It looked to have been torn free from its parent plant during some summer thunderstorm. She lifted this and, balancing it against her shoulder, carried it to where she could use it to bridge the worst of the tangle at the oak tree's base.
This done, she ran across, taking her lessons from squirrels, who know better than to pause and let the bough dip and shake them off. Without waiting to think about how much this next step would hurt, Firekeeper embraced the tree trunk, leaping as high as she could above where the briars twined, and missing the thickest portion. Even so, the meeting of flesh and thorn hurt tremendously.
She had considered throwing her rope over the limb that held the ravens and climbing that way, but had not cared for how the jolting of her progress would affect the imprisoned birds. Nor had any other limb been low enough to provide her with a perch, for this oak was of the type that shed lower limbs in its climb to the light.
Now the wolf-woman went up, rough bark and sharp thorns tearing her, but she thought even then that the thorns were not as sharp as she had expected. They were green, as if newly grown, and bent a little, rather than piercing as deeply as they would when more mature.
Lovable had finally noticed Firekeeper's approach and her croaking cry broke its rhythm.
"Care," she said. 'Take care. They cut and tear and move."
Firekeeper didn't spare word or breath to question this odd warning, but she did manage a small sound of reassurance before asking the question she had been dreading.
"Does Bitter live?"
"He lives," Lovable replied, "barely. I bite away the stems when they push too hard."
"Do you think you can fly?"
"If my wings were free, but I will not leave Bitter."
"No. I would not ask that. If I promise I will carry him with me?"
"Then I will fly."
Firekeeper was level with the branch on which the ravens were held, and now she drew her Fang. No need to creep out over thorns when she could cut them away. She could not cut out the entire mass, lest its falling weight drag the ravens with it, but at least she could remove a few sections.
She set to work, cutting not only the briar from its link to the root, but from its link to the part farther along the tree. The vine was fresh and stringy, slicing apart with relative ease. Firekeeper pushed the mass to the ground and slid out along the branch, keeping her weight flat and evenly dispersed. This brought her even with the cut end of the briar remaining along the branch, and in the sap she saw something that made her heart beat faster with horror.
Mostly the sap was a translucent liquid, not unlike what she had seen in other plants, but tins held a thin thread as bright red as fresh blood. Indeed, Firekeeper did not need to have Blind Seer's sense of smell to feel certain that it was fresh blood - raven's blood, mingled just maybe with a trace of her own.
"Lovable," she said, "I am going to loose you first. When you fly free, make sure you go clear of the mass of vines at the base of this tree."
"I won't leave Bitter," came the querulous response. "I have sat beside him, biting the vines. I will not leave."
"You are between me and him," Firekeeper said. "Fly or I will throw you."
She heard a faint croak from within the shrouding tangle about Bitter. It sounded like "Fly..."
"I will fly," Lovable said.
Firekeeper cut away the briars, moving with surgical care so that she did not nick the raven beneath. Her task was made harder in that the vines had tightened, as if they would strangle what they could not pierce. More than once Firekeeper encountered cut ends, the vine above them still green but wilted, and surmised that Lovable had cut her own bonds as well as Bitter's.
But he must have been more tightly held. Firekeeper thought, and could not break free - or perhaps he was badly injured Lovable would not leave him, even though it meant remaining in pain and fear. She is more faithful and brave than ever I could imagine such a bubble head to be.
When the last briar was loosened from around her, Lovable raised her wings. The action took tremendous effort. Firekeeper saw dots of blood, red-black against the battered plumage, red where they dripped and stained the bark. She could only guess at the raven's pain.
But pain or not, Lovable stayed true to her promise and half flew, half glided to safety, perching on a low shrub, well away from the briar oak. She was greeted by a low howl from Blind Seer, and Firekeeper, reassured that both were safe for now, turned her attention to Bitter.
The male raven was so wrapped in thorny vine that Firekeeper had to cut away several pieces before she could clearly see the bird beneath. What she saw made her retch, a slight, involuntary gag. The vines had cut deeply into Bitter's flesh, breaking the long feathers on wing and tail, pushing through the delicate ones closer to the body. Blood oozed from these cuts, but far worse was the damage done near to the head.
Bitter's eyes were squeezed shut, the baggy lids covering the orbs below, but Firekeeper felt certain that at least one of those eyes was ruined beyond saving. It seemed to indicate a horrid sense of humor on the part of the vines, to rip out the eyes of a raven, a creature renowned for dining on eyes.
"But only of the dead," Firekeeper muttered. "Only of the dead."
She worked carefully, remembering everything Doc had ever taught her about the treatment of wounds.
"Hurry, Firekeeper," Lovable croaked.
"Patience," Firekeeper said absently, her attention on Bitter.
There was a thorn rooting in toward the heart. She pulled it loose with great care, hoping she would not cut through any of the many blood carriers that nested near to this organ.
"Cut through the vines," Blind Seer suggested. "Remove their hooks when you are more safely on the ground."
Firekeeper didn't reply, but she thought his idea a good one. She had the most severely rooted out, and now she cut the others free a hand's width from Bitter's body. He neither moved nor made a sound, but his blood leaked like that of a living creature, and Firekeeper took faint comfort from that.
When she had him free, she tucked him inside her shirt so that she might have both hands for climbing.
When Derian gets here, she thought, I can get a clean shirt from the packs. The reek of this one would frighten every game animal within a day's run.
Then Firekeeper slid her way out toward the end of the branch, and when it dipped beneath her weight, she lowered herself very carefully to the ground, hardly jolting her passenger at all.
Blind Seer canted his ears in approval. "Believe me, dear heart, I did not hurry you for no reason. Look, and see why Lovable and I were so impatient"
As Firekeeper looked back, she saw what the others had taken care not to tell her lest she be distracted from her task.
From the mass at the base of the oak tree, the briar stems were moving, putting out new vines, climbing up, slowly to be sure when measured by the speeds of the beasts, but with incredible speed for a plant.
XIV
SHALL I TELL YOU what the others wish to know?" the Voice asked. "Shall I tell you where your companions are and what has become of them?"
Truth, dozing near the fire circle after another footsore day of travel, did not awaken, but she did reply.
"I am too tired for games," she said. "Tell me or do not tell me, as you wish."
"You are a contrary soul, Truth."
"I am who I am."
"You are less than who you were," the Voice replied.
"I am more than what I was. At least now I have body and spirit joined. This is a great improvement over the year and more I spent apart."
"But before then," the Voice prompted. "Can you truly say that you now are more than who you were then?"
Truth could not so she did not. She wished the Voice would leave her alone. She did not care at all for the fashion in which it made her think.
"I am here," she said, then went on with more honesty than ever she would have when awake. "I am sane. Voice, I dread that bodilessness. I am not like you. I was born a creature of flesh and blood. Whatever other things I later attained, this came first But can one such as you even understand?"
"One such as me?" The usual mockery was gone. If anything, the Voice sounded sad. "What do you think I am?"
"Plik tells tales of the Meddler," Truth responded. "He calls this Meddler a deity, and though Harjeedian may argue and theologize over precise definitions, I can smell his sweat. Harjeedian fears you so much because he fears that you are indeed a deity."
"I am..." The Voice fell silent in midphrase.
Truth, suddenly impatient, snarled, "Tell me this. One answer, straight and clear. No visions. No evasions. Are you indeed the one Plik names 'the Meddler'?"
"I have been called that name," the Voice replied. "Others have borne it, but, yes, fairly it is mine as well."
"So you are a deity."
"The one does not follow the other. You are called 'Truth,' but you are not 'truth,' nor are you the only one to have been so called."
"But you speak to me in dreams. You send visions. You are bodiless, formless. Do you deny this?"
"How can I deny what is evident? You chide me for telling you so little. Fine. Let me tell you more, but know this: I tell you not for your comfort, but as a challenge. Do you wish me to continue?"
Truth licked a dream paw with a dream tongue. Real tongue mimicked the motion, but she felt it not at all.
"Challenge?" she said. "Do you tell me that to make me back away?"
"I tell you," the Voice said, "because otherwise you will claim I tricked you. I will not have you weasel out that way."
"Weasel? I am a jaguar. We do not slide and slip. We stand and fight."
"So you take my challenge."
"I take your explanation. If that comes with a challenge, well, I will decide what to take and what to leave. "
"Well enough. Then I tell you with no evasion, no prevarication, nothing but the absolute... truth."
Although there was no sound to herald it, Truth had the feeling the Voice was drawing in a deep breath. The jaguar waited, alert, listening, but otherwise not making his task any easier than she must
"Like you I was born with a body," the Voice said. "You have called me 'Meddler,' and meddling was in my nature. I had power, too, and power combined with an optimistic spirit can be dangerous to the security of others. I made enemies. They imprisoned me."
"Why didn't they just kill you?"
"They did, after a fashion. They slew my body, but made sure my spirit would live on."
"Why not just kill you outright?"
"Because, like you, they had their suspicions that I might be a deity. Imprisoning deities... Well, that has a long tradition. Killing them, however, especially when you are mortal, even when you are sorcerers, that is something not to be done lightly."
"Sorcerers?" Truth licked her paw. "Yes. We suspected that. After all, the place where we found your buried lair was covered with their marks."
"I protested once before when you called that my lair," the Voice said reprovingly. "It was not my lair. It was my prison. It was the one place on all the great wide world where I could manifest my physical body, but those who so imprisoned me took care that I would not be able to use my power to do anything but survive. They left me the means of creating heat and light, but I must use power to do that. They left me books to read - many about my own past exploits, to mock me with my lost greatness."
Truth tried hard not to feel pity, for she knew pity was a great manipulator of other's emotions. The Meddler might as easily have been called the Manipulator, if the tales Plik had been telling them as they traveled were any indication. Even so, she could not help but feel a little pity.
"The only place you could manifest a body," she said. "Does that mean your spirit could roam freely?"
"No, it could not My spirit was as bound as my body, but in many ways its imprisonment was far worse. At least my body could read or prepare food or bathe or even sleep. My spirit was bound in a restricted space about the size of that 'lair' you uncovered. It was lit in a pale silvery greyness, just enough to make it impossible for me to forget my limits, but not so bright as to be in the least cheering."
Truth did feel pity now. Her insanity had at least been interesting. Too interesting sometimes, but better than disembodied captivity.
"Did they mean to drive you mad?" she asked.
"I think they meant to drive me to suicide," the Voice said frankly. "They wanted my death, remember, but could not bring themselves to murder one they feared was divine."
Truth recalled something about which she had wondered.
"You must be a deity, to have lived so long. Divine Retribution chased the Old Country rulers from our land over a century ago. All the signs were that you had been buried far longer."
"Far longer indeed," the Voice agreed. "But I am neither divine nor immortal. In killing my mortal form, my enemies separated my spirit from the ruin that the passage of time makes on physical things. I have aged, but having no body to wear out, and having held on to my sanity thus far, I have not died."
"But you escaped that prison," Truth said. "Didn't you? How else would you have found me? How else would you have known something of what has gone on in what you term 'the great wide world'?"
"Clever, Truth. Yes. I did escape - a little - but that comes later. First there were long, long years during which I walked on the borderlands of madness and into the countries near death. I suspect there are times when I was truly insane, but I do not remember those times clearly, except as one remembers dreams - in fragments, out of order and incomplete."
The timber of the Voice changed, and Truth knew the challenge was at hand.
"But, Truth, I overcame this madness. I had been told how I might manifest a body for myself ..."
"Who told you?" Truth asked.
"My enemies. After all, they wanted me dead, and how could I kill myself if I lacked a body?"
"Sensible. Cruel but sensible."
"Indeed. Maintaining that body was exhausting, though, and I soon realized that not only would I need to learn to live without a body, I would need to learn to thrive in that state."
Truth did not wait for the Voice to add whatever clever to cutting statement he undoubtedly had planned.
"And that is your challenge for me, is it not? You have risked insanity an
d overcome it, so I should prove I can 'o the same."
The Voice had the grace to sound a little ashamed.
"Something like that. Yes. That will do."
Truth huffed her breath out through her nostrils.
'Tell me how you came to escape your prison."
"It was not," the Voice said in tones of refreshing honesty, "completely by my own merit. I believe that what you call the Divine Retribution had a great deal to do with. When people fear for their lives, suddenly, even an old enemy - especially one who is rather well known for taking things in hand ..."
"For meddling," Truth growled.
"As you say," the Voice agreed cheerfully. "When people fear for their lives, even a Meddler looks good. Someone come and made an effort to contact me. They did not free me - that would have come later - but they, let us call it 'opened a window' so that we might converse. While we were negotiating, some came who thought that treating me was worse than the plague. These did their best to close that window, but before they could do so fully, they were interrupted."
"Interrupted?"
"Attacked, to be frank. Some died. Some fled. Some may have escaped back to the Old World. I don't know. What I do know is that the window was left open the merest sliver. That pretty much ended any inclination toward suicide on my part. I spent years, decades, sliding that window open enough that I could get a look outside my prison. As you can imagine, I found the world much changed. I also learned that I was still firmly tethered to my prison. As entertainment to fill my lonely hours, I took to looking out that partially open window and ..."
"And you started meddling again," Truth said. She couldn't manage a growl. Could she blame the Voice for his actions? Could she say that she herself would have acted any differently?
"I did," the Voice agreed. "My first thought was that sorcery had imprisoned me, so I needed sorcerers to free me. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any in the immediate vicinity.
"Here and there I found those who were attempting to resurrect the art, but they were like children who have found their father's bow and a quiver of arrows. They have some idea how the device should work, but they lack the strength to string the darn thing, much less knowledge as to how to fit the arrow and make it fly."
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