Wolf's Eyes

by Jane Lindskold

  “I wonder,” Lady Melina was saying, evidently not for the first time judging from the sulky expressions on her three children's faces, “that a woman as closely descended from the family that produced Queen Zorana the Great could bear such foolish children. It must be your Redbriar father's contribution.”

  “Our father's great-grandmother was Queen Zorana her-self,” Jet growled. His dark eyes beneath his handsome brow were bloodshot. Elise might have felt more pity for him if she hadn't suspected he was nursing a hangover. “She is our great-great-grandmother. Can you claim close kinship?”

  “Impudence,” Melina sighed. “A shame you have so little cause for it, my stupid son. Doubtless when Queen Zorana married CUve Elkwood, the strength of the Shields was diluted and diluted again when King Chalmer insisted on marrying a commoner. Pity that King Tedric's lot all died. My brother Newell might have returned Shield strength to the royal line.”

  Elise could tell that Melina was toying with her brood, taunting them, insulting them. She wondered that the elder two took it so calmly, for neither was known for patience. With a slight shiver, she realized that they feared the little woman who stood there, her gaudy gemstone jewelry glittering in the midmorning sunlight.

  “But Tedric's children are dead and Newell never got a legitimate heir.” Lady Melina drawled the word “legitimate” with a special glower for her son. “Doubtless like some he has spilled enough seed into anonymous loins.”

  Elise felt her face grow hot. Though Jet had never gotten that close to her, she felt herself shamed by impUcation.

  “Sowing wild oats,” Melina continued in her silky, furious voice, “is well enough for common soldiers but for a boy whose only hope for the crown is his betrothal alliance with another family it is not only irresponsible, it is near treason!”

  She grasped the jet pendant depending from the multi-stone necklace around her throat and closed her fingers around it as if those slender fingers could crash it. Jet's eyes widened in unfeigned terror and Elise imagined that she felt heat from where her betrothal gem rested against her skin.

  “Treason against the crown you could wear and treason to the father and mother who would wear it before you!”

  In a single easy, graceful movement Lady Melina removed a fine chain silver bracelet. Then she took the jet pendant from its place on her necklace and attached it to the chain. Swinging it pendulum-like, she crooned in a voice that trans-fixed her listeners.

  “From this moment forth, Jet, my son, your loins are bound. Your staff shall not rise. Your blood shall not heat. Until you prove yourself worthy of power, know yourself impotent! This is my curse!”

  Elise bit her lip to hold back an involuntary cry of fear. She should be grateful, but this ritual gelding spoke of black sorcery she had thought vanished from the land.

  A small whimper of what might have been laughter, but could equally be a strangled scream, slipped from Sapphire Shield's lips. Melina turned her gaze upon her eldest daughter, pitiless despite the bandages visible beneath the bodice of the young woman's gown and the gloves that offered mute testimony to the cuts and braises on her hands.

  “And you,” Melina sneered with even more contempt, “you pitifuUy ambitious chit! I've watched you riding your great blue stalUon, armed and armored like some warrior maiden from a nursery tale. How did you like yourfirsttaste of battle?”

  “I won,” Sapphire retorted, clearly speaking with effort. ‘Two of the three men fell to my blows.”

  “Yet you screamed for help like an infant,” came the cold reply, “screamed and brought to your aid our greatest rival for die throne: Lady Blysse herself, thatflea-bittenwaif who has insinuated herself into King Tedric's favor. You brought Lady Blysse and her lackeys.”

  Sapphire tried to protest, but Melina surged on, her hand coming to rest on the blue stone in her necklace.

  “Do you think I enjoyed thanking a common carter for assisting in my daughter's rescue? Do you think I enjoyed being reminded that a lesser scion of House Kestrel has been awarded a knighthood that none of my children will ever have the courage to win? Sir Jared rushed to your aid though unarmored and not even bearing a knife! You brag that you defeated two common thugs, yet were it not for the three who raced to your aid, I doubt that you would have taken out even one!”

  Between clenched teeth Sapphire said defiantly, “When have you even stood before even one opponent?”

  Melina remained pitiless. “I am wise enough to know that a woman can have other strengths—that wisdom and knowl-edge grant their own powers. You, however, you care for nothing but posing. You resent Jet's competition instead of seeing that it matters not which of you wears the crown. Whoever wears it, my will shall rale!

  “Better,” Melina continued after pause pregnant with menace, “that you limit your ambitions to the inheritance you will take from your father and me. When you inherit your lands and country manses, then you may prance around in arms and armor to your full delight. For now, remember your place and do not put yourself at risk. I might decide that you are not worth preserving after all.”

  She twisted the blue stone at her throat and to Elise's horror the blood drained from Sapphire's face. This was not faintness on her cousin's part; it was as if for a moment Sapphire's body was robbed of blood and breath. Melina changed the sapphire for the jet stone on her chain. After a horrid moment while the sapphire swung back and forth, gUttering like a fragment of the ocean deeps, Melina said in almost conversational tones:

  “I curse you, my daughter, Sapphire, with pain. Though the wound in your side has been treated, though it is clean and good ointments soothe the flesh, though Sir Jared has the talent of heaUng, still you shall feel pain there, dull and throbbing as it is even now. If you should defy me further, then the pain shall become sharp and keen, as hot as when the knife first sliced your flesh. Thus pain shall tutor you in prudence until I judge you have learned your lesson.”

  Sapphire's hand flew to her bandaged side and she gasped as if for a stark moment a knife had freshly- reopened the wound. Melina bared her white teeth at her daughter, grimly satisfied.

  As Melina reattached the pendants of jet and sapphire onto their places on her necklace, her gaze fell upon Opal, and the girl, to this point silent and stolidly calm, paled and trem-bled.

  “And you, Opal,” Melina said. ‘Take these punishments as a warning unto you. Obey me and perhaps someday I will favor you with lessons in my craft. Disobey and know my wrath.”

  “Yes, Mother,” the little girl whispered. “I understand.”

  Melina pressed her hand once again to the gems on her necklace. “I conjure and bind you all to silence on these matters. The day has not yet come for my art to be revealed to the masses. Speak of these doings and it shall be as if red ants bite your tongue. Even as you suffer, the truth you sought to reveal shall be refashioned into clever falsehood that shall honor me and defame you.”

  “Yes, Mother,” came three subdued responses.

  “Follow me. We have work to do before the diplomats from Bright Bay arrive.”

  Only as Elise watched the four Shields turn back toward the encampment did she realize that she had her fingers pressed to her mouth as if to keep even the faintest sound from coming forth. Even as she straggled with her fear, Elise could feel a terrible resolve forming within her, a resolve she dreaded almost as much as she dreaded Melina's dark arts.

  Oh, Mother! she thought frantically. You never knew how wrong you were about Lady Melina. She is a sorceress, her powers as wicked as sin!

  A terrible thought came to Elise then. What if Aurella WeUward did know? What if her tongue had been conjured into silence by Melina, even as Melina had bound her own children? Who could be trusted to be free of the sorceress's power? How many others might have been so silenced?

  At last, Melina and her children were safely gone. Pulling herself with effort from her thoughts, Elise became aware that for some time now Ninette had been murmuring to her-self, only now da
ring to permit her frantic whispers to become audible.

  “Oh, ancestors, protect us from evil magic! Wolf, Elk, Raven, Bull, Horse, Puma, Bear, Dog, Hummingbird, Deer, Lynx, and Boar: Gracious Ones, shelter us from harm. Estrella and Rozen, Jinette and Tunwe…” Ninette continued reciting her personal ancestors back to the days of Queen Zorana and then began on those of the House of the Eagle, for they were believed to protect all their subjectsfromharm.

  Patting Ninette on the shoulder, Elise joined her in her prayers. Even as she recited the familiar litany, Elise suspected that the answer to those prayers might come in a form as mysterious and terrible as the powers themselves.

  AFTER A NIGHT OF ROAMING the richly stinking streets of Hope, after Woodshed and battle, sleep could not enchant Firekeeper. Blind Seer at her side, she darted through the fringes of farmer's fields, haunted the forests, and swarmed up the spreading branches of a thick-leafed oak to howl defiance at the moon. Only when dawn drifted into full daylight—a late-summer day promising muggy heat rising from the river before midday—was Firekeeper willing to sleep.

  She preferred the forests, cool even in the hottest parts of the day, especially when compared with the interior of a canvas tent. Derian had protested, more because Earl Kestrel had punished him for permitting such wildness than because he saw any harm in her choice.

  Yet, despite her affection for Derian, Firekeeper had persisted. Stone walls when there had been little other choice had been tolerable; a canvas box when the trees beckoned a few yards away was not.

  Elation had provided compromise, alerting Derian to Firekeeper's location and keeping a golden eye bright for the earl. Should Earl Kestrel begin to harangue Derian, Firekeeper could reappear before he was fully warmed into his subject.

  The earl's need for Firekeeper outweighed his desire to assert his power, so she could protect Derian. Now that she had known Earl Kestrel longer, she realized that there was a certain fairness to him. He assumed that Firekeeper obeyed Derian and thus Derian was doing his job if Firekeeper did as the earl commanded. If she did not obey, Derian would be punished.

  Firekeeper obeyed nothing but her own impulses, but it didn't bother her if Earl Kestrel believed her controlled.

  So as she had since the march from Eagle's Nest to Hope began, the wolf-woman slipped into the forest. In a tangled copse of young maple saplings, not far from a narrow thread of a stream, she pillowed her head on Blind Seer's flank and fell instantly asleep.

  The past night's events would not leave her mind to rest. Looping like embroidery thread through a needle's eye, they stitched out a pattern that gradually mutated into something approaching nightmare.

  Shadows and rocks underfoot, round rocks, smooth like those in a streambed but these are wet by other than good, clean water. The stream that runs over these rocks is horse piss and dog piss, man piss and cat piss, vomit and sweat, manure and spilled beer, the rotted sap of dead vegetation and the salt of ancient tears. Even when the rain falls it cannot remove the stench entirely. It settles into the crevices between the rocks and waits for heat to bring it forth.

  Barefoot, Firekeeper runs from cobble to cobble, feet light and silent. There are no twigs to snap here, no leaves to crumble and crunch. She feels like a shadow given life and Blind Seer padding beside her is heralded only by the panicked barking of dogs in their pathetic yards. Their appeals to their masters bring them no help, no praise, only angry threats and the occasional thrown shoe.

  Partly from pity, partly because their barking annoys the night, Blind Seer silences the curs with a growled command. In their secret hearts the dogs are grateful. They retire to doormat or kennel, wrap their tails about their noses, and try to believe they are as ignorant as their masters as to what friend of the darkness walks the streets.

  Each place where Derian and Doc halt is a delight of newness to nose and eye. The tavern at twilight invites care; it is a busy place. Wolf and woman sniff about the stable-yard, steal scraps from the trash heap, and marvel at the variety of people coming in and out the doors. Leaving Blind Seer below, Firekeeper swings onto the roof to peer into windows on the upper story. Nothing she sees through the bared windows is precisely new, but much is educational:

  So it is with the livery stable and the heavily scented gar-dens of the herbalist, Hazel. Then comes the return through the night, the scream, Sapphire Shield fighting in fierce earnest, the scent of her sweat cutting sharp and acrid even through the pong of the streets.

  Indecisive, Firekeeper lurks in the shadows, uncertain whether this is a fight in which another might be welcome. Only when Derian is endangered does she throw etiquette to the winds and bound forth. As she catches him in her arms, the blood streaming from his wounds alternately red and black in the lamplight, Blind Seer leaps upon the attacker.

  A man is not a wolf. There is no thick ruff to protect his throat. He is not even a deer with great cabled muscles beneath a thick hide. He is not even a rabbit who can some-times shake loose leaving a mouthful of fur. A man is a pitiful naked beast. One snap and the red blood is running onto the cobbles, overlaying their stench with a rich new scent.

  Blind Seer vanishes. Firekeeper remains. When Derian comes to himself, she sees horror and fear in his eyes. Deep within her, despite the exultation of victory, she is troubled.

  Horror and fear in his eyes. A body: the throat a raw red hole through which life gushes and is gone. Fear and horror in her heart. A raw red wound gushing life. Hot and blurring in her eyes, tears salt on her tongue: Hot and terrible in her belly, hunger refusing the question of right and wrong, living and dying.

  Where is the sweet sticky beverage? Day after day, it had been forced between her lips. Slowly life had returned with it. Breath had no longer tormented her lungs. Then there had been milk, sucked from the teat of a she-wolf, girl-child nursing side by side with blind balls of fur that grew far faster than she.

  Blood flowing life-hot from a gaping neck wound, steaming in the cold of an autumn day. Around her she hears the Ones growling at the pack to keep their distance. Despite hunger, the girl cannot drink blood, not with the memory of the doe's soft brown gaze upon her, with the sharp stink of her panic as the wolves closed upon her still fresh, not with her last terrified leap for freedom, doomed before it began, imprinted on her mind.

  The girl's stomach roils. The doe's eyes had reminded her of her own, of those of a sweet-voiced, soft-bodied woman even now becoming a dream. If she drinks, she kills that woman again.

  “So, is the life to be wasted then?”

  The girl has no idea who is speaking to her. The voice is familiar, but her memory slides around it, as unable to grasp its source as her hands are to pick the sunlight from a stream.

  “I can't,” she sobs. ‘Til be sick!”

  “Sick? You are sick now. Sick unto dying. How much longer do you insist that others do your living for you?”

  “Why live when so many others die?” the little girl retorts, remembering the cooked-flesh smell of that almost forgotten woman. “Why me?”

  “Fire spared you for a reason. Why can you not accept this?9'

  Though calm and measured, yet there is a note of impatience in the voice.

  “How can I live on others’ deaths?” And the death of which she thinks is not just the death of the doe, but the death of those others in the fire.

  “We all live upon death, even the deer. There is no escaping that part of the cycle. Your dying will not save the deer. Your dying will not reverse the fire. Your dying will only slay others someday.”

  “What!”

  “Nothing more can be said on that matter. Trust me.”

  “Why?

  “I have need of you. Enlightened self-interest is the best reason I can give you.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “Nor should you. All you should know is that your dying will serve no one. Your living may serve many, not the least of which are those who have labored for your life. Now, drink!”

  �
��I can't!”

  “The doe dies for nothing?”

  “Let the wolves eat her!”

  “Why them and not you? Why are you less worthy of life?”

  “I…”

  “Drink! The heat and liquid will do you well. You are nearly starved from your stubbornness.”

  “Let the wolves have her!”

  “Foolish human! Very well! If the wolves are to have her, if the wolves are to live, then I name you a wolf. Be a wolf. Forget that ever you were human. Your heart is a wolf% your appetite a wolfs, your memory a wolf9s. Strange wolf you may be, but if only a wolf may live, then you must be one!”

  Hot blood, slowing to a trickle. The wolf dips her human head, laps at the stuff, sucks deeply, finds an appetite for life in the blood. Chews hungrily at the still-warm flesh, finds strength for living. Only when she is sated does she stop growling the others back from her right. Only then do her parents call the rest of the pack to share the bounty.

  When they are finished, there is doe no longer, not even bones, for these have been cracked for their marrow and the splintered segments chewed into dust A single doe isn't much to the hunger of a wolf pack. Before the night is over, they will hunt again, a two-legged wolf running beside them, eager now to be in on the kill.

  XVII

  AFTER THREE DAYS' RESIDENCE IN HOPE, Prince Newell Shield flattered himself that he under-stood the budding political situation better than any of,i. the central players. Although a century of sporadic warfare following hard upon the chaos of civil war had brewed hatreds between Bright Bay and Hawk Haven, largely these were personal—hatreds for the ugly deeds done in battle or of one person for another—not the terrible abstract fear and horror with which both night fears and some enemies were regarded.

  Perhaps this was because legends of the Old Country monarchs who wore crowns carved from skulls and wielded scepters worked from human thighbones remained fresh—real enough to raise thrills of terror when some old grand could say, “It was in my own grandmother's day that this was so,” and be right.