Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart

by Jane Lindskold

  She thought of Lady Melina's necklace and the magical control it seemed she wielded over her children but chose not to volunteer that information.

  I didn't see her use it, the wolf-woman comforted herself, and didn't Hazel Healer say that the power could have been some other thing she called trance induction rather than true magic?

  The raven strode a step or two, fanning out his head feathers so that he now appeared to have ears or little horns off the top of his head. Although, like all the Royal Beasts present, the raven tended to be larger than the average of his kind, still he remained a bird on the ground and Firekeeper was not intimidated.

  "Human," the raven began, and this time Firekeeper interrupted.

  "I can understand," she said dryly, "that the question of whether I am human, as is my shape, or wolf, as is my heart and upbringing, could be a matter of long and useless debate, but, since there appears to be an antagonism to humans in the thread of your questions, I would prefer you address me by my given name. I am Firekeeper and I demand that you not forget it."

  There was a murmur at this speech, punctuated by a dry cough of laughter from the puma. The raven flattened his feathers, raised them, then settled.

  "Firekeeper," he began again, "although you did not see anything that you could confirm as magic, is it your best estimate—taking the scent from the wind as it were—that the humans believe that the kingdom of Bright Bay was possessed of objects that they think are ensorcelled?"

  "Yes," Firekeeper replied. "Elation may not have known to tell you, but those very items of which you speak are no longer in the keeping of Bright Bay, but have been taken away by the woman called Valora, who is now Queen of the Isles."

  This caused a hubbub, including a few queries shrieked at Elation who denied any desire to deceive. The peregrine's indignant denials were honest as far as they went. Since she had never reached Revelation Point Castle, the peregrine had not learned of Queen Valora's theft until after her meeting with the Mothers.

  Firekeeper and Blind Seer had confided in Elation later, during their journey west, and all three had agreed that it was best if Firekeeper presented that report—evidence of her good faith toward whatever the Royal Beasts intended.

  After the initial astonishment had passed, Firekeeper reported on the circumstances leading up to Queen Valora's departure for the Isles with the supposedly enchanted objects, speaking with an ease and fluency that would have astonished her human friends, who were accustomed to her more halting command of a language that—to her memory at least—she had not spoken until slightly over half a year earlier.

  When she had concluded, a boar with gleaming white tusks, who had arrived during the early stages of the meeting, grunted:

  "This tale troubles me. Such care to steal speaks of desire to use. One does not go to the work of grubbing up roots merely to leave them rot."

  "Nor," agreed the jay, "does such passivity mate with what we have observed of this Queen Valora."

  "We are agreed then," the raven said, "to continue the course of action we settled upon when first the peregrine Elation brought her report?"

  Assent sounded all around, no less enthusiastically in the howling of the One Female than in the bugling of the elk.

  Even the white-tailed doe, wide eyes reflecting concerns that Firekeeper could only guess at, stomped a forehoof firmly thrice.

  "Human Firekeeper," the raven said, sleeking his feathers then ruffling them again, "we have called you here not only to add your report to that of the peregrine Elation, but so that we might set a charge upon you."

  Firekeeper frowned and would have spoken, but to her surprise the One Female nipped at her arm, warning her to silence.

  "We want you," the raven continued, "to find these three objects and steal them from their current possessor. Bring them to us and we in our turn shall make certain that they are never again used."

  Firekeeper spoke, heedless of the snap of her mother's fangs against her bare skin.

  "Steal them?" she asked, her voice high and clear with amazement. "For you? What use do the Royal Beasts have for things made by humans, for humans?"

  From seeming sleep the bear said in a voice thick with honey, "Because they were made by humans, for humans—that is why we want them. You are a naked wolf. I accept the evidence of my ears even though it violates the evidence of my nose. Surely you know that nakedness is a human's greatest strength."

  Firekeeper stared at him.

  "I cannot solve your riddle, wise bear."

  But the bear appeared to have drifted off to sleep again and it was the fox who replied.

  "Because I am smaller than a wolf, I must dig hiding places through all my territory. Humans are even weaker than I and so they make dens out of the bones of the earth and the flesh of the trees. They make fangs from metal and from stone. They wear our skins—or those of our Cousins—lest they freeze."

  Firekeeper nodded slowly. "I begin to understand. And these objects—what are they? I have heard humans speak of the old magic as a thing to fear, but I lack the knowledge to sort the stories a bard sings from the truth."

  "We owe the wolf cub a tale," the puma drawled from his rock. "I will begin."

  Firekeeper sat, leaned back against Blind Seer, and opened both ears and heart to listen.

  Chapter XII

  First of all, little wolfling," the puma began in a voice like velvet, "even the humans know themselves strangers to this land. They call it the New World or the New Countries, as if they had created it by stumbling upon it, but like all lands this one has been here since the oceans suffered portions of the earth to rise above them.

  "You may have also heard their tales of how these lands were uninhabited, ripe for settlement, eager for the axe and the plow. This is not true. We Royal Beasts lived here and our tales say we have always lived here, though our tales may miss some fragment of the truth.

  "Suffice to say that we lived here long before the coming of the humans. Were it not for the tales the wingéd folk brought back from their migrations, we might have thought that there were no other peoples than those we already knew."

  Firekeeper, who had been living and breathing politics since her departure with Earl Kestrel the previous spring, thought she detected a ripple of uneasiness on the part of some of the Beasts. The doe folded back her ears and the boar grunted to himself, but no one challenged the puma, so he continued his tale unchecked.

  "When the humans first landed their boats on these shores it was at a place far from here. Some of our kind went to meet with them and indeed for a time the humans behaved as visitors in our land. They agreed to the limits we set and we even made treaties after the human fashion."

  The bear shook himself and muttered sleepily, "They had not the wit to read the warnings in claw-marked trees or the noses to scent other kinds of markings."

  "Nor," the puma continued, "did they seem able to share the land with others. I have my territory, but it is the territory of the wolves as well, and of birds and even of fish. Sometimes we challenge each other, but when a challenge is ended and a particular conflict solved, we go back to sharing. Humans cannot even share land with each other—and never with those they fear."

  The doe spoke, taking up the thread of the tale with an enigmatic glance at the puma.

  "And so, Firekeeper, the time came that the humans exceeded the amount of land the Royal Beasts had permitted them. More humans came across the oceans, wanting still more land. Some of the Beasts fought—challenging the human right to claim our territories as their own. And then we learned that they had claws sharper than the puma's, armies larger than packs of wolves. Lastly, we learned that these seemingly naked creatures had weapons more terrible than any we had been born to—the power of what humans now call Old Country magic."

  "When first the humans came," the One Female said—her storytelling recalled to Firekeeper the many stories she had heard in her childhood—"they were mostly sailors and merchants and farmers. Later,
as the colonies grew and were founded by many nations of the Old Country, the humans began to contest among themselves. Clearing away trees a hundred and more years old is great labor. A beaver enjoys damming streams, but digging courses to carry water to fields would defy the most optimistic mole. You have seen the dens humans build, the trails they cut… None of this happens easily. Soon the newcomers thought that it would be more efficient to take the first comers' lands from them—as a bear might steal a young wolf's kill."

  The bear opened both eyes and reared in astonished protest.

  The raven squawked, enjoying his role as meeting head, flapping wings that spanned nearly Firekeeper's full height when spread.

  When the bear had halted—already halfway across the ground to the One Female—the raven said:

  "Tell your tale, wolf, but remember that you are not speaking before your pack. Keep insults to yourself."

  Firekeeper was astonished when the One Female abased herself, pressing her belly to the ground and whining.

  "I did forget my manners," she said, "speaking as I was to one of my pups."

  The bear collapsed back as if deciding against the effort to rise, but Firekeeper could tell that there was bad blood between this creature and her mother. At the folding of the raven's wings, the One Female continued the tale:

  "When the humans first fought those Beasts who challenged their right to claim territory, they fought mostly with their false fangs and claws. Worst were the arrows, for they came from a distance and often from secret. Still, we held our own against even these. The wingéd folk especially learned to spot the archers, and how to spoil both their hiding and their aim."

  Judging from how the gathered raptors shifted from foot to foot and admired their talons or honed their curved beaks against branches, the wingéd folk had spoiled more than those long-ago archers' aim.

  "When the humans began to fight each other, however, a new and terrible force entered our land, and with its coming we learned to feel true terror of humanity. No longer did they seem naked creatures, but more akin to a poisonous insect that seems small and weak, but injects fire and sometimes death into its bite."

  The elk—who had been digging furrows in the soft forest duff with his spreading rack—now took up the tale, his telling recalling the wind moaning through bare tree branches in the dead of winter.

  "We had long known that humans possessed magic. Indeed, that was one reason we had treated with them as equals rather than dismissing them as Cousins, for one of the things that separates the Royal Beasts from the lesser Cousins are the magical gifts that occur from time to time.

  "Among the first humans to come there had been those who could communicate with us—not as freely as you do, Firekeeper, but in a halting fashion. Almost every ship that had made the long voyage across the oceans had carried someone who could whistle up a wind. Early in our meetings, their healers used their talents for our good rather than reserving them for their people alone.

  "But when the humans began to war among themselves, there came from the Old Country those who were gifted beyond some talent. These sorcerers came in many varieties, but one and all they possessed an ability we did not have—the ability to channel power in multiple ways, not merely one, as with a talent. Through rotes and rituals, they shaped the magical force. The greatest among them not only used these spells, they could enchant objects so that the least talented among them became suddenly sorcerous."

  The kite spoke from her high perch.

  "At first they directed these powers against each other, but when they had resolved their wars, the sorcerers acted against us. No talon is so sharp as to cut fire that explodes out of empty air, no bite tears so deeply as to seize lightning from the skies. And our tales tell of other things—of magics that warned of our approach so that even the stealthiest were detected, of invisible shields that wrapped the humans' limbs so that they were unbiteable.

  "Eventually, solemn counsel was held among the Royal Beasts. There was much land east of the Iron Mountains, so much that the humans would be many years filling the space. We resolved to flee—flock and pack and herd—to make those mountains our stronghold.

  "We had learned that iron weakened the sorcerers' power, though it did not appreciably weaken the abilities of those with inborn talents. We had noticed that the sorcerers were reluctant to chase us into the mountains and wondered if the very iron ore so plentiful in some of the mountains' rock caused them discomfort. And we had learned that humans were lazy. Surely they would not pursue us if there was no need and room enough east of the Iron Mountains for them to spread."

  In a sharp voice, like but unlike the barking of a dog, the vixen spoke on, "It was a well-thought-out plan, yet not all the Royal Beasts chose to abide by the decision of the council and no one forced them to do so.

  "Initially, those who remained behind found it easier to hide themselves, for they were few and more careful not to confront the humans. Even so, within a few generations none of the larger Royal-kind remained alive east of the Iron Mountains. Some of the wingéd folk did go east, but these did not do so out of stubbornness or stupidity. They went—even as the peregrine Elation has so recently done—to spy out human doings.

  "As Royal-kind passed into human legend, any humans who might chance upon an unusually large hawk or an especially brilliant jay dismissed the evidence of their own eyes—an easy thing to do, for it is hard to judge the true size of a flying creature."

  The sun had risen high during the deliberations and the tale-telling that followed. When the fox paused and a crow was about to take up the telling, the kestrel Bee Biter interrupted:

  "Much time has passed and I am hungry, yet I would not miss the smallest part of this story, for it is rare to hear it told in full. Let us pause and hunt… and graze," he added with a glance at the herbivores among the gathering. "I suspect that Firekeeper would like time to think on all she has heard."

  The raven glanced around the circle and saw that many were in agreement with the kestrel.

  "Then we shall adjourn," he squawked, "until evening time brings the sun low."

  The Royal Beasts melted into the forest or soared into the air until Firekeeper stood alone but for Blind Seer and Elation, looking around in wonder at what had been a crowded glade.

  Elise awoke on the morning of the wedding day oppressed by a feeling of nightmare.

  She shifted into a sitting position within her curtained bed, burying her hands deeply in her golden hair and pushing her fingers against her scalp as if in that way to banish a vague sense of wrongness. All she succeeded in doing was bringing it into focus.

  The ball the evening before… Accepting an offer to dance from the large man with the roll to his walk and the Islander accent. Prancing up and down the line, trying to be polite to her partner, yet acutely aware that Sir Jared danced a few couples away, that his set would intersect with hers.

  Glancing toward Sir Jared during one exchange and seeing what she intuitively knew she was not meant to see: Her partner, Baron Endbrook, tucking something into Lady Melina Shield's glove. The movement had been smoothly done, so neatly managed that it could have been a part of the dance. Indeed, flirtation was a recognized element of the fun.

  But Elise felt certain that Baron Endbrook had not been flirting with Lady Melina. He had made no effort to seek her out before this; after the dance ended he made no effort to ask her to dance.

  Guardedly, not certain why she was so suspicious, Elise had kept an eye on the two, helped by the fact that Baron Endbrook was quite tall and that Lady Melina, clad as she was all in black, made her soft-footed and mostly silent way among the more gaily clothed guests like a black cat in a cage of songbirds.

  Elise had nearly given up her vigil when she saw that Lady Melina's course as she strolled about the room on arm of one of her brothers would take her quite close to Baron Endbrook. As they had stayed almost conspicuously apart since the note was passed, this seemed significant.

  When
Lady Melina had dropped her fan where Baron Endbrook could retrieve it for her, Elise nearly cheered with delight. This was too much to be insignificant. She couldn't tell for certain if Baron Endbrook removed anything from the fan before returning it to the lady, but he certainly had the opportunity.

  Lady Melina had departed soon thereafter and Baron End-brook invited a new partner to dance. He was still dancing when Elise's parents suggested that the family depart for home and Elise was forced to give up her vigil.

  Yet once she was out in the family carriage, Elise had found herself doubting that she had actually seen anything important. Perhaps Baron Endbrook truly had been flirting with Lady Melina.

  Lady Melina was not an unattractive woman for the mother of five, and she was now widowed. Her family connections were irreproachable—if one could leave out her traitor brother, and such a brother might make her more interesting to an Islander. If Baron Endbrook was unmarried, he might wish to raise his status by wedding her.

  A casual question to Lady Aurella—easily enough asked, as all were gossiping about the other guests—had brought Elise the information that Baron Endbrook was indeed married and the father of three. That ruled out a marriage alliance, unless he intended a divorce, or was thinking about a marriage for his children rather than himself…

  Elise had bit her lower lip in frustration, glad that the darkness within the carriage granted her a measure of privacy. She longed to ask what her mother thought, but that would mean explaining just why Elise had such a great dislike of Lady Melina—a thing Elise had sworn to keep secret.

  Nor could she confide in Ninette. The events of last summer had left her lady companion no less afraid of the reputed sorceress.

  At that moment, more than ever, Elise had wished for the freedom of the military camp. If only she could talk with Firekeeper or Derian or Doc! Firekeeper, however, was gone, apparently in answer to a summons from the wolves—an odd thought Elise shied from thinking about too much, for it threatened her sense of the natural order of things.