Truth leapt onto the remaining boulder, arranging herself so that her paws hung down the front, slightly to the sides. She rested her chin on a convenient protrusion, then let her eyes slide mostly shut, drowsing in the sun.
None of the men greeted her, but they clearly knew she was there. After a moment, Truth felt as if she had always been there, and the lazy cadence of their conversation had been a constant backdrop to her sleep.
Derian was saying, "I thought you couldn't come to the Nexus Islands, Meddler. Something about a barrier or shield or something."
The Meddler shifted the clover stem from his front teeth to his back so he could talk around it without losing the rhythm of his chewing.
"I haven't come to those islands. You've come here."
Blind Seer looked about appreciatively. There was a herd of red deer grazing in the far distance down one of the slopes. The prick of his ears said he was thinking how nice it would be to give the deer chase, if only he wasn't so very comfortable where he was. Wolves were like kittens that way.
"Here?" Derian asked.
Truth wondered at the human tendency to ask questions. Wasn't it enough that they were here and away from the worst pain of querinalo?
"Here," the Meddler said, taking the clover from his mouth and gesturing about their hilltop with the chewed end before popping the entire thing into his mouth and chomping down. Immediately, his fingers began a lazy quest for another flower-topped stem.
Truth had eaten the occasional mouthful of grass, but never with much pleasure. She wondered if the Meddler was working on a hairball.
Derian looked uneasy. "This is a nice place, but I don't remember it, and I can't think why I should be hallucinating about you of all people, Meddler. Earlier I was visiting my family back in Hawk Haven. That at least makes sense."
Blind Seer stopped watching the deer, and directed his uncomfortably penetrating blue-eyed gaze upon the Meddler. Truth thought that if the wolf were a cat the tip of his tail would be twitching.
"Here," Blind Seer said. "Bitter said something about meeting you in a place... I think Plik said something similar happened in his illness. A strange place ..."
The Meddler nodded. "On the edges of life and death. That's right. That's where I am. That's where you are. I figured that once you folks went over to the Old World at least some of you would catch querinalo. Retreating from the pain and fever brought Plik here. I thought I might see who else would come to call. I must say, I didn't think to see you, Blind Seer, and I rather thought I might see someone else."
"Firekeeper." Blind Seer growled softly as he said the name. "Why won't you leave my Firekeeper alone?"
"Take care what you claim, wolf," the Meddler said easily, "especially now, when you're not even in full possession of your own life. That's not the time to be laying claim to someone else's."
"Why are you so interested in Firekeeper?" Blind Seer persisted, his hackles rising.
"Firekeeper is interesting," the Meddler said cheerfully. "Certainly you of all creatures should agree. Wherever Firekeeper goes, things change around her. She sees the world inside out and outside in. She's a beast with human form, and a human with a beast's soul. Just accepting Firekeeper for who she is can be enough to make most intelligent creatures reassess everything they've ever believed. I learned to meddle. She does it without even trying."
Derian had listened to this exchange with increased anxiety. Now the words he had been holding back came blurting out.
He looked at Blind Seer, his eyes so wide Truth could see the whites all around.
"I can understand you!" Derian said. "I just now realized it. We've been sitting here talking. Talking. Really talking, with words and everything."
Blind Seer cocked his ears and thumped his tail. "I can see why that would disturb you, Derian. It's not so odd for me. I've been listening to you talk all along. It's you who have not understood my speech."
Derian grinned, his expression just a bit crazed. "This is really great. Is this how it is for Firekeeper all the time?"
The Meddler replied when Blind Seer only wrinkled his brow in puzzled consideration.
"It is and it isn't. This place is - for lack of a better word - 'translating' what Blind Seer, and Truth if she'd bother to say anything, are saying. Because you're accustomed to words, you're hearing things as words. Firekeeper doesn't always need words to understand what is being said - any more than you need your little brother to say the words 'I'm happy' when you see him smile."
"I think I understand," Derian said. "So this isn't another of my private hallucinations. We've all come to the same place."
"You're all dying," the Meddler said bluntly. "Or dangerously close to severe bodily injury from the fever that comes with querinalo. You all need to decide how you will manage your illness, or you may find your bodies in such unpleasant places that you will refuse to rejoin with them. In short, you will die."
Blind Seer narrowed his eyes. "You said you met Plik. Did he lose his talent because of your advice?"
The Meddler shrugged. "I prefer to think that I convinced him to live. He was close to dying, you know, closer even than you are now, for he had not yet recovered from blood briar poisoning before querinalo took hold.
The twins cared for Plik as well as they could, but being either animal nor human, Plik presented a very difficult case. I would imagine you will, too, unless those who watch over your body have specialists in animal medicine at they can consult."
Truth remembered the slaying of the three corrupted kidisdum.
"I suspect they do not," she said, and saw Derian's head snap around at the sound of her voice.
She tilted her head and curled her whiskers playfully at him. Derian relaxed just a little, focusing on their immediate problem to escape the strangeness.
"What is querinalo?" he asked. "I don't know much about medicine, but I do know that usually fever is a sign of infection."
"Or infestation," the Meddler said. "Many illnesses are caused by little creatures that enter your body through tainted water or food or even air. Your body raises its temperature to convince these creatures to leave."
"Interesting," Derian said. "Then is querinalo caused by some creature like this? Does it remain in the air of the Old World, but no longer in the New?"
The Meddler finished eating his clover and rubbed a finger under his nose. He pursed his lips, then bit his lower one.
"Stop avoiding Derian's question," Truth said, half raising a threatening paw. "You know something, don't you?"
The Meddler fell still, his gaze watchful, and Truth felt a little thrill of threat.
"Say instead that I suspect," the Meddler said, "and you will be closer to the point. I have wondered why querinalo lingered in the Old World and not the New. If it was a disease such as those caused by the little creatures of which I spoke, surely it should have found plenty of hosts among the talented - at least enough that there would be an occupancy or two as a child grew into strength. However, there seems to be none of that."
"So why the difference?" Derian pressed. "What is it you suspect?"
"I suspect," the Meddler said, "that querinalo is a curse, rather than a disease."
"A curse?" Derian said. "I know the word, but only in the general sense of an ill-wishing. The old stories contain references to powerful magical curses, though ... Is that what you mean?"
"Exactly," the Meddler said. "An ill-wishing of great strength, one created to target those who possessed considerable magical power. What troubles me is that this explanation doesn't answer all my questions."
"What troubles me," Derian said forcefully, "is what querinalo may do to us three, right here, right now. Plik told us he had to let querinalo burn along his talent to save his life. I... I don't know if I can do that. I mean, I've lived all my life with horses. What if I find I don't have the same way with them anymore? I'm not sure I'd know myself. It would be like losing a sense... No, worse, like losing a part of my soul."
"I don't even know what my talent is. How can I destroy something I didn't know I had?"
The Meddler shrugged. "Unlike Derian, you'll never miss it."
Blind Seer didn't look pleased. "I would always wonder. Always. It would be like dying, in a way. Is there no alternative?"
"There is the way the Once Dead took," the Meddler said, "that of directing querinalo to cause some physical mutilation or transformation in order to spare the rest of the body."
Derian looked very uncomfortable, obviously remembering the monstrosities the Once Dead had become.
The Meddler went on. "The greater the talent, the greater hold querinalo has, and the greater the sacrifice must be."
Blind Seer rose and shook. "It seems to me there must another way. A harder way, perhaps, but another way."
"What?" Derian asked, his tone equal parts trepidation and hope.
"Accepting the pain, running with it, not from it," the wolf said. "Taking the fever in one's teeth and twisting it."
The Meddler was looking distinctly alarmed.
"That course might kill you. It might drive you mad."
The wolf panted laughter. "You humans value life too much. We wolves know that a life spent merely protecting life isn't living at all. If I am to be a wolf, then I must live as a wolf."
Blind Seer rose onto all fours, stretched, and gave them each a bow that, in the Meddler's case, was accompanied by a mocking yawn. Then he leapt from his rock. He was running before his paws hit the soft ground.
"Tell Firekeeper," the Meddler said, rising to his feet so that he could catch a last glimpse of the running wolf. "Tell her that I really did try to save him."
PLIK SAT WITH HARJEEDIAN one morning, huddled over cups of tea and slices of toasted bread near the hearth in the larger of the two cottages. The meal was breakfast for Harjeedian, dinner for Plik. They had divided their numbers into shifts, and Plik found night watch easier than did any of the humans. Last night he had taken it with Tiniel, and that young man had already gone to bed.
The weather outside had turned ugly. It was rapidly becoming apparent that the climate here - wherever it was they were - was much less mild than that of Liglim. Here a driving wind from the north brought bone-chilling cold and what one of the ospreys swore was a scent of snow.
However, the weather was their ally as well as a source of discomfort. In the sleet and rain, the remaining residents of the island were disinclined to wander. The yarimaimalom continued to guard them, and Harjeedian made regular trips to make certain nothing untoward was going on.
The situation was uncertain, but the memory of the Once Dead exploding and of Firekeeper's fury, and the rumors of what had happened to the three who dwelt near the menagerie, were all fresh enough that most of the survivors were content to be alive. This halting peace would not last, but soon querinalo would have run its course in the new arrivals, and decisions could be made.
"I want to go home," Plik said, hearing the longing in his own voice. "It is cold here. It was hardly autumn there when we left. My coat has not thickened."
"When the others are well," Harjeedian said in what Plik thought of as his formal "aridisdu" voice. "Then we shall check the omens. Hopefully, they will show us how we can go back to the New World, and still leave this place secure against use."
Harjeedian sighed then as if hardly believing the truth of his own words. He reached for the honey pot, stirring a dripping spoonful into his tea. When he spoke next, it was in much less formal tones.
"But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to wanting to go home. We keep our temple complex warm for me comfort of the reptiles. This wind goes straight to my marrow."
Plik nodded. He glanced over to where Isende was sponging Derian's forehead with cool water, then to where Firekeeper sat spooning an herbal infusion between Blind Seer's jaws. Much of this dribbled out along the sides of the long, slack jaw, but surely some of it got into the wolf.
"I don't know what astonishes me more," he admitted, keeping his voice low, "that Blind Seer who never showed the faintest whiff of magic should fall so to querinalo, or that Firekeeper who seemed a preordained victim should not."
Harjeedian nodded. "I have thought much the same, bat the omens are indistinct on this point. Some seem to say that Firekeeper does indeed have the disease. Others that she does not. As for Blind Seer... I don't even know what questions to ask."
"I wonder," Plik said, "if Firekeeper does not succumb because she is so intensely focused on Blind Seer. Her fear for him is a fever that will admit no other."
"A reasonable thought," Harjeedian said. "Sometimes the best way to halt a wildfire is to set another blaze in anticipation. Tell me, Plik, are you certain you never sensed anything magical about Blind Seer?"
"Not that I recall. Of course, he and Firekeeper were so often in close company that if I did sense anything, I might have credited it to her rather than to him. You must understand, I did not consciously go about sniffing for magic. Indeed, until I was brought to the Old World, I was hardly aware of using the ability at all."
Harjeedian looked puzzled, so Plik tried to explain.
"When you use your hearing, unless you are trying to hear something - say someone whispering - you are not really aware of the sense at all. You hear sounds constantly, though, enough that if something were to strike you deaf, you would know instantly."
"Even if," Harjeedian said like a good student demonstrating he has grasped the lesson, "to that point I would have said that all about me was quiet."
"Exactly. So it was with me and my sensing of magic. Sometimes - as when taking my shift on the maimalodalum's traditional watch against the return of the Old World rulers - I would 'listen' consciously. Even then, I heard little, for there was little to hear. When I awoke in this place, I thought there must be a storm raging, so loud was the sound pounding in my head. Indeed, I did not sort it out all at once, and when I did I could hardly believe that there was so much to 'hear.' I had to learn how to fold my ears down to dampen the sound."
"My ears do not fold," Harjeedian said, chuckling slightly and touching his own stiff human ears, "but I believe I understand."
"Humans do have remarkably immobile sense organs." Plik said. "You cannot close your nostrils or ears, only your eyes. It must be dreadfully inconvenient."
"There are times," Harjeedian admitted. "So, essentially, what you are saying is that you never really 'sniffed' Blind Seer."
"Not really," Plik admitted. "By the time doing so began to seem important - as when I could have tried to learn which of our number was likely to come down with querinalo - it was too late. My ability had been burned away."
Harjeedian was about to say something when Isende rose from where she had been sitting by Derian and came hurrying over to them.
"Something's not right with Derian," she said without preamble, motioning for them to follow her. "He has been muttering for the longest time. I even thought the fever was diminishing. But now it's rising again, and ... look."
They had reached the young man's bedside by now, and for a moment Plik could not see what Isende was talking about. Harjeedian had knelt by the bed and was touching Derian's forehead with the back of his hand.
"Has Derian swallowed any of the doctor's potion lately?"
"Yes," Isende said. "A good bit, and water as well. That's why I thought he was getting better. Then I noticed, well, noticed ..."
She pointed, and this time Plik understood. Derian's flesh seemed to be - Plik struggled for a word - melting, rather like the wax on the edges of a thick candle melts, not turning liquid, but becoming soft. While it held its form, Plik did not doubt for a moment that if he reached out he would find the flesh malleable to the touch.
The idea both revolted and tempted him. He saw his own hand moving toward Derian's ear. Harjeedian's hand slapped him sharply away.
"Don't touch him!" he said. "I don't think we even dare continue the cold compresses while Derian is in this state. I don't like how the skin moved when I touched his forehead. I'm going for the doctor."
"I'll go," Isende said, already moving for the door. "You're closer to being a healer than I am. Stay with him!"
The doctor came promptly. He inspected Derian carefully, his expression growing more and more grave - then touched with fear when he saw that Firekeeper had left her vigil at Blind Seer's side and come to join them. The residents of the Nexus Islands had been given time to learn about those who had conquered them, and they knew that other than Blind Seer the one the dangerous and apparently unpredictable wolf-woman valued most was Derian.
Plik thought their assessment unfair only on one point. Firekeeper was not unpredictable when it came to those she viewed as her pack. If Blind Seer was One Male to her One Female, then Derian was a valued and trusted second - protected and honored as such.
However, for all the intensity in those dark, dark eyes, Firekeeper said nothing but stood head angled so she would hear the faintest sound from Blind Seer, waiting for Zebel's report.
"This ..." the doctor gestured toward Derian, "is not an uncommon direction for querinalo to take. Indeed, we might call it a hopeful sign."
Isende frowned. "I remember nothing like this when Plik was ill - or when my brother and I were either."
"That is because," the doctor said gently, "you - as did I, as did Plik - chose the path that would lead to becoming Twice Dead. This manifestation occurs with those who are fighting to retain their magic - and in doing so are sacrificing some part of their bodies. This is why I say this can be seen as a hopeful sign. Derian has chosen to live, and that is the first step to recovery. We can even say that he has chosen what 'medicine' to take to effect his cure."
Wolf Hunting Page 51