“But what are they doing?” Brit whispered. She and Sparrow were still entwined, half-hidden by the cabin shadows beside the wagon. “They’ve been like that since eventide finished.”
“They’re healing.”
The furrows deepened below that bristle brush line of hair, and Brit plainly admitted, “I don’t understand.”
A sigh underlined the difficulty. “It’s hard to grasp, unless you’ve imprinted with pack-pups. Even harder, if you weren’t at least raised around them.”
“Are you telling me to mind my own business?”
The bluntness prompted a fond smile from Sparrow who glanced up to her lover. “Soroi, I know better than to do that with you.”
A reluctant grin appeared. “All the same, I’d like to know. Sandwolves aren’t as common as eitteh among the Marshals — or dey Sorormin — but they aren’t particularly unusual either.”
“I know.” Sparrow paused again, her silence stretching. This time her shadowmate must have been more sensitive to the melancholy around the trio as she didn’t press. And eventually, Sparrow stirred to continue. “It’s sad tonight. Their killing last eve — it must have broken the pack bond in some way.”
“A pack bond?” Brit murmured uncertainly. She couldn’t place the term.
“It’s a sort of pledge, yet more than that. A contract, almost a law, but one bound by emotional attachments and ethics, not merely expediency. All packs forge their own. It designates the role of each packmate. It establishes who is leader when. It outlines a code of conduct and responsibility, not only between members but between the pack and the rest of the world. It defines everything they are.”
“Without words?” Brit marveled. The absolute quiet among the three, though, seemed to be a tangible sound in itself. Somehow, without physical gesture or verbal exchange, the solemn connections among the packmates were clearly visible.
“As an eitteh will understand the sense in your speech, a sandwolf will grasp the sense in your heart. Some say, once imprinted they speak to your very soul.”
A tiny shiver skirted her spine, and Brit’s arms tightened about Sparrow. “They say that too of Blue Sights.”
“Aye, the perception is similar. Less complex, but similar. They very much feel what their packmates are feeling.”
“But then how do they manage with something like last night? I knew Gwyn during the Wars. She left the fighting because she couldn’t tolerate her pack being used as ambush specialists. She can’t conceive of killing another unless it’s in blatant self-defense.”
“Most sandwolves have no such scruples. Perhaps that was why Jes gifted them to her?”
Brit nodded slowly. “Jes said as much to me once. Gwyn’s sense of duty and responsibility to others in need is too strong to let her remain content in Valley Bay.”
“She is Niachero in every sense,” Sparrow acknowledged with respect.
“And yet she is poorly armed beyond the Gate House with such a conscience as hers.”
“She is a Sister. Would you truly want her any other way?”
“Jaded as we’ve become? No, I wouldn’t — unless it meant her death to be otherwise.”
“The sandwolves will protect her.”
“By killing?” Brit challenged softly. “Do they even understand what that does to her?”
“They grew up in her household, ti Mae. Their own sensitivities were shaped by Gwyn’s convictions, and so they too mourn tonight the breaking of the bond. But their first instincts will always be to guard the pack.”
“Always?”
“Unless they make a conscious decision not to. That too is part of their pack bond — when sacrifice should be given beyond any limit of personal safety. But still,” Sparrow’s thin shoulders rose in a shrug, “rage or fear can obliterate anyone’s rational sense. Last night those men tried to burn Gwyn to death. They tried to kill her in a horrible way!”
“Probably hoped to make it look like an accident. Like she’d just knocked over a lantern in the haymoss.”
“Aye, until the horses and sandwolves disrupted that.”
“Doesn’t change the fact of what they were doing, though.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Brit swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t want to burn to death. I think I’d rather freeze on the Ice Plains than that.”
“And I… I can’t say I wouldn’t have been the one hunting those men to their deaths, if it’d been you instead of Gwyn.”
“Revenge…,” Brit finally understood the damage among the packmates then. “To know you killed because of me…?”
“It would scar us both.” Sparrow’s eyes suddenly felt dry and scorched as she watched those silent friends in their struggle. How long would it have taken to make peace even with herself, if it had been Brit she’d killed for. She wondered.
◊ ◊ ◊
Chapter Eight
Leaves whispered in the summer’s night, the faint breeze lingering in defiance of the season’s warmth. The odd-matched crescents of the Twin Moons peered at one another through trailing clouds. The wagon creaked as someone inside turned over in her sleep. At the sound, the tattered ear profile of a sandwolf’s head rose from among the lumps beneath the low slung canopy of the neighboring tent. Motionless, she concentrated, identifying the sounds of the Sisters within the tinker-trades’ wagon, the mares snoozing — the ever-so-distant sense of rightness that was her bondmate in the woods beyond; it was Ril’s watch.
Contented finally that nothing was amiss, Ty permitted herself a quiet sigh and returned her chin to its warmed spot in the blankets. She tucked one massive paw underneath herself, edged against Gwyn’s sleeping form, and quite happily went back to her own dreams.
Gwyn felt the stiff-backed push along her spine. She never wakened. She merely rolled a little more to her stomach, her hand checking her sword’s placement from habit.
Her fingers stayed, tightening on that hilt. Her golden skin began to shade caramel and the silver of the unsheathed blade shimmered as the powers of that lifestone stirred. The bits of grass and soil seemed to sink, molding a cradle about the sword’s length and framing Gwyn’s hand as part of the grip, while within her dreams, fires arose.
A deep frown marred her sleeping expression. She’d had enough of those unsettling nightmares in the ten-day past… had thought them finally gone. She had no need for their return.
But the images persisted — her grip on the sword tightened. A subtle, unnamable difference from the usual memories registered, and curiosity began to curb her impatience. Gwyn found herself drawn into the commotion of fire and people — into a place too real in detail to be any mere dream.
Wind whipped ash into her face and she ducked, lifting an arm to protect herself as she coughed. Gwyn didn’t recognize the clothing. There was no familiar stiffness to her leather jerkin, and as her hand fell to the sword at her hip, she thought the pommel felt too square to be her own.
The body that held her consciousness was upright again — shouting, pointing. A group of villagers with shovels ran to attack a new cache of flame. A girl stumbled by with an impossible load of empty pails — she was no older than Mak’inzi, Gwyn thought — and she nearly fell over her own feet. A hand reached out and caught her with surprising gentleness. Together they restacked the buckets, but as the child looked up her eyes went wide with disbelief. A muttered word of praise and a reassuring squeeze to the girl’s shoulder sent her scrambling off again towards the water lines.
It wasn’t going to be enough! Gwyn heard in this mind that wasn’t hers… and she felt the rage of helpless frustration followed by a blast of icy cold determination.
That resolve disturbed and confused Gwyn. It was such a completely alien essence — raw with passion but chilled by logic… no hint of the simpler furies that she knew from her bondmates. No, the sense of a greater whole surrounded her; Gwyn felt as if she’d walked into the middle of some long spun, intricate board game — as if she were some minute player suddenly
elevated to the status of leader yet she had no concept of the strategy needed.
A shout brought her back to the chaos. She felt the weight of a heavy braid swing at her nape as she looked. Then she was running towards the blazing inn, the upper corner crumbling three stories above. Waving, warning — backing the folk away from the neighboring merchant’s house which they’d all hoped to save. Then she was there dragging a fallen woman through the fiery cascade.
Others came to help as the two pulled clear of the worst. Gwyn felt the heaving of lungs, the smoke-sick feeling in the stomach, but there was no more than a single moment to recover. Orders flew — directions to regroup the water lines and to move the trench digging further back.
Yet all through the frantic hurry was the sinking despair that they couldn’t do enough. The east end of the village was going to be lost. Their hope now lay in keeping the fire from the brushberries and the hoe farms… in not letting it jump the rushing stream at mid-town.
Their hopes had been in her to prevent just this! The savage thought flew — she was failing them in allowing the Clan’s destruction to go so unchallenged!
Failing them? By the Mother’s Hand there must be a way! There would be a way.
Gwyn felt the surge of fury reforge an inner strength of commitment. She stood back with that body then and with a few others of that burning village, watching the raging fires devour the hopes. A curt directive sent a companion off to check on the trench workers. Another moved the water brigades into a broader pattern. But most of what could be done was already in place now.
The night sky glittered with sparks and billowed with blackened smoke. The Twin Moons’ crescents looked on gravely. Gwyn felt her own somberness rise as the grand heights of the inn finally collapsed completely, shards of breaking timbers caving inwards with one final roar. She felt her own sadness at the waste, and yet she sensed that same steady commitment still.
There would be no more of this. Somehow there would be an end — and it began here. Tonight.
The quiet confidence that accepted the challenge — the calm, compelling, absolute surety that Gwyn met — astounded her. She felt no arrogance, no vanity in that manner. She felt no sense of revenge or haunting of further helplessness. All she found was certainty — a sense of self and responsibility that simply transformed that pledge into fact.
It was a sense of self Gwyn’s deepest soul knew could not be her own.
She awoke with that fright, dropping her sword as she bolted upright in her bedding. Ty lurched to her feet, crouching and alert with a faint warning growl. Gwyn blinked, disoriented to find everything about them slumbering so peacefully. She glanced overhead at the Twin Moons and breathed the Goddess a short prayer. Ty edged nearer, still tense, and Gwyn relaxed with her packmate’s tangible presence.
“Forgive me, Dumauz.” She rumpled those great furry shoulders and buried her face in Ty’s thick ruff. “I’ve been dreaming, nothing more.”
There was a haunting sense of wrongness lingering after those words, and suddenly, uneasily, Gwyn wondered how true they were. An echo of that confident resolve brushed through her awareness again. It was less startling now in its muted tones, but no less compelling. She still couldn’t imagine herself possessing that solemn acceptance at swearing to perform the impossible. She couldn’t imagine trusting herself alone to have that kind of strength, that kind of ability. Perhaps with her packmates beside her… but alone? No, she had never met that sort of woman, not among any of the Marshals and not among all of dey Sorormin. It was her fantasy that such a woman could even exist.
Wasn’t it…?
◊ ◊ ◊
The signs in the morning were even more disturbing, Gwyn found.
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it.” Brit bent over some as she squinted at the place Gwyn’s sword had lain the night before.
“Has it something to do with your strange alloy?” Sparrow suggested. She was on her knees, fingers probing the shallow depression in the soil where the length and shape of the long sword was imprinted. Even the curled fist of Gwyn’s grasp at the hilt was still recognizable. There had not been a single blade of grass cut, however, and the crust of the topsoil itself had not been broken, merely sunken. Most trail readers would have sworn this indentation was at least a season old, and the obvious fact that it was not, only disturbed them all more.
“It’s possible…,” Brit mused obliquely.
“What is?”
“That Sparrow’s right about our metal’s alloy.”
With deliberate patience, Gwyn drew a very slow breath and counted to cool her temper. She knew she was more upset by the print — and the dream — than she was at her old friend’s muttering ways. Her patience won, and Brit went on without noticing her ire. “The Council of Ten has always maintained that the lifestones are the essence of life energies, in a manner of speaking. We’ve known since the earliest dealing of that first n’Athena with the Council that the combination of our alien alloys with a lifestone act in unison. They create a sort of energy collector for channeling amarin.”
“Ann… nehna?” Gwyn shrugged, missing the point Brit was trying to make.
“Well, the stone in your hilt allows your concentration to guide the power of your sword blow. It enhances the strength of the alloy. It seems to do all that by gathering the life energies together into a directed purpose.” Both Gwyn and Sparrow nodded, following now. “So, why should the channeling be limited to destructive purposes? If your amarin aren’t bent on slashing something apart, wouldn’t the channeled energy be more apt to do something less… less violent?”
Gwyn sat down with a bump. A fly-away strand of red hair was brushed aside from an eye as she frowned, but it was an idea she found intriguing… and a bit unsettling because of its novelty. “What you’re suggesting, Brit… it’s almost like saying a piece of Valley Bay steel welded to a lifestone creates a funnel for amarin. Like a Blue Sight projecting intentions to create an illusion or something?”
“Hmmf… doesn’t sound quite so feasible when you say it like that, does it?”
“And wouldn’t someone else have noticed before this?” Sparrow challenged. “I mean, the Council—”
“The Council,” Brit interrupted somewhat sternly, “might in fact be responsible for no one knowing it, if we are right.”
The corner of Gwyn’s mouth lifted in irony. “They do have a way of secreting off certain knowledge, until it’s less dangerous for the populace to have it.”
“Which implies an even more disturbing idea,” Sparrow whispered, and the others looked inquiringly at the thin woman. “Don’t you see? When the Council considers knowledge dangerous, usually it’s because people haven’t yet got the common sense not to abuse the information. The only time it’s allowed to surface is when there’s no longer any danger of any abuse. Or…”
“Or there’s an even greater danger that requires the drastic risk of loosening the knowledge prematurely,” Brit finished in a dark tone.
“I like that even less than my dream.”
“No… no,” Brit shook her head quickly. “I don’t accept it. The Council has its means and methods, certainly. But I don’t believe in their omniscience. The Seers have their blind spots. The Council Masters have their prejudices. They do well enough as guides for Aggar, but they are not always right, nor are they always aware of what is important.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know, Gwyn’l. I don’t think we’ve got all the pieces to our puzzle yet. It’s certainly too soon to tell if your little experience was anything like a vision or if the sword’s sensitivity to your amarin was responsible for this hollow. And I’m not ready to allow that the Council is consciously trying to communicate with us. Fates’ Cellars, Women! They could just send one of their eitteh friends down with a message!”
“Certainly would be clearer,” Sparrow allowed with a wry grin. “And they do seem to prefer brevity and clarity when dealing with Sisters.”
/>
“Right about that,” Brit nodded. “We don’t play men’s games, and they know it. Better to deal openly with us and us with them.”
“Basic respect,” Gwyn murmured, only half following their words. A scowl creased the golden skin between her brows, and Gwyn proposed, “Could it be that this is related to Khirlan and the Clan? The Clan is richer in alloys than most, even despite the Council’s quiet distribution of the scrapped metals. Could I be seeing something because my sword’s lifestone is collecting energies from a wider source? Could the Clan’s metals be acting like some sort of nebulous web?”
“The Council’s Seers would have noticed that long ago,” Brit countered. “To them, that sort of anomaly would have been like a flare going up during a single moon!”
“And I agree with Brit,” Sparrow inserted. “The Council doesn’t play games with dey Sorormin. They would have warned us when they sent Brit and me to you.”
“Then what kind of amarin web would I be sensitive to?”
“Through your sword?” Brit pressed.
“Aye,” Gwyn nodded slowly, still frowning. The pieces still refused to form any coherent pattern. “What could I sense that the Seers wouldn’t?”
A scoffing snort from Brit answered her abruptly. “Damn little, Gwyn’l. Damn little.”
◊ ◊ ◊
They came upon the farmstead almost unexpectedly, the small house and larger barn blending well into the natural landscape of giant honeywoods. That the place was several generations old was evident not only in the varying coloration of its mud bricks, but in the way the neighboring trees twisted and bent their roots protectively about the buildings. This particular family had not only adapted their crops to hoe farming symbiosis, it appeared that they had also taken on the ideal as a way of life.
Fires of Aggar Page 12