The Queen—she was the one for the music and the books. She never cared to hunt, but she loved to ride. She played a little pipe of rosewood and gold. She died, almost to the moment, when he died. They saw him fall, and then they heard her give a great cry of sorrow and she died, there, with you beside her in the bed.
You have her gentleness, her smile. She gave your brother her fair hair, and you her eyes. They loved her, your brother and the King. Their eyes followed her. Light-moving, she was, like a bird, and graceful as water. Water never makes a movement without grace.
The Hunter rode with ravens on his horns.
His mouth ran with blood. He ate the last words of the dying. He harvested their names, so that when dawn stretched across the field, taut with silence, like an unbeaten drum, the dead were unrecognizable.
They watched us from the wood, until we brought in our dead. And then they came down and got their own. What they knew was theirs. They were gone by nightfall. The rest, the snow and the hungry animals got.
Your father died. That’s enough for you to know.
He died on Hunter’s Field.
We brought him in as we fled inside. We were able to recognize him. All night we watched.
By dawn there was nothing alive on Hunter’s Field but ravens.
The Hunter vanished with the moon. As if he had been a dream. No one knows who made him.
Riven of Kardeth paid some sorcerer to make him. He could find no honorable way to defeat Pelucir.
There was a ring on your father’s right hand that the Queen gave him. We recognized him by that.
She cried sorrow.
The Hunter killed him, and she cried sorrow and died…
Talis sensed the Wolf behind him.
It was a power far stronger, more complex than his own. It moved silently as shadow, a nebulous presence slipping from leaf to leaf after him; it knew his name. His body faltered; his knee twisted suddenly, throwing him off balance. As he fell he melted into his shadow, cast by the moon in a net of boughs. Shadow, he picked himself up and limped to an oak, then molded himself like bark around its trunk.
Talis.
The horn sounded again, still solitary, very close. He shifted upward along the curve of the first branch, clung there like some great dark moth. Something moved beneath him, shape pulling itself free from leaf and shadow and bark. At first he thought it was the mage. Moonlight struck it, and Talis nearly lost hold of both the tree and his shifted shape. What rode below was made of leaves, its upturned face layered and molded into fierce and elegant lines. One hand rested on a bare, pearl-black mane, the other held a spiral of silver; the fingers were long and graceful and green as birch leaves. Hair, rippling, heavy, the gold of dead oak leaves, shook back down broad oak-molded shoulders; eyes, shadowy green, seemed to pick Talis out of the bark.
He raised the horn and blew.
Talis dropped out of the tree, ran, half-man, half-shadow, deeper into the wood. The rider followed, a broken leaf, a tiny, snapped twig, a sigh of wind. Other horns sounded then, a distant weave of trumpet and hunting horn: the ghosts, Talis thought, of the One Great Hunt. No one else hunted at night. No one human. He felt himself pulling into human shape then, his eyes burning, his throat swelling, burning with horror. He put his wrist against his mouth to stifle sound, and heard his footsteps, beating through the dead leaves. Atrix Wolfe, they said. Atrix Wolfe. The name pursued him, ran beside him, casting its white shadow in the moonlight.
He cleared his mind stubbornly, dreading the touch of the leaf-shaped fingers, the inhuman eyes, almost as much as the White Wolf’s charred-silver eyes. He pulled his weary, struggling body around a huge rotting log, and then lay among its ruins, half-shadow, half crumbled, lifeless wood. The rider, a brush of leaves and moonlight, passed him. Talis drew himself into a pool of shadow, then, under a touch of moonlight, became a hare, frozen still, listening. Trumpets sounded again, a bright, urgent fanfare of warning to the wood. He moved to the end of the log, turned to hide within its hollow heart, and found himself face to face with the White Wolf.
Talis.
Startled out of shape, he became human. He whirled to run. Something caught his wrist—a human touch. He stumbled, wrenched his knee again, and caught himself against the side of the log. He leaned against it, catching his breath, one hand tight against his ribs, watching helplessly as the mage took shape in front of him.
“Talis,” Atrix Wolfe breathed. Talis, his throat burning again with too many words, tried to twist free; the mage pulled him back, held him against the wood, held his eyes. “I am not the only thing you have to run from in this wood, and you are running blind. Listen to—” He disappeared then, into all the words that Talis could not say, pouring out of him in a sudden, furious flare of silver. Talis, amazed at himself, straightened; the mage shaped himself out of light before he could run again. “Talis—” He flung up a hand as Talis shouted a silent question; light whiter than moonlight parted against the mage’s hand, scarred the trees around them. Talis sagged against the dead oak, shaken by the uncontrolled power; it held no answer, he realized, no language but a cry.
He found words finally and used them. “Why? Why you?” He gripped the mage suddenly, and, stumbling off balance, bore him back until a tree stopped them. “Why you, Atrix Wolfe?” Trumpets sounded at the name. Ghosts, Talis thought furiously; the mage, his face turning toward them, looked suddenly haunted. “Was it betrayal? Dishonor? What did Riven of Kardeth promise you in return?”
“If I had taken what he promised me,” the mage said tersely, “your father would be alive, and both Pelucir and Chaumenard would belong to Kardeth.” He slid like a shadow out of Talis’ hands, left him holding wood. “It was nothing that simple.”
“No,” Talis said, staring into a tree bole. He turned his head, trembling, still clinging to the tree, searching the worn, powerful face for a hint of answer. “It wouldn’t have been. Anything that simple.” He heard horns again, an untuned chord, and realized suddenly that all the ghosts were in his head. He whispered, cold with horror, “Burne.”
“Yes.”
“Burne. He’s hunting at night, here—”
“He is hunting you,” Atrix said. He did not move, but something of him—a thought, an expression—reached between them in a silent plea. “Talis—Listen—”
“He will be killed!” Talis did not recognize his own voice. Birds whirled, crying, out of the trees. “Like our father!”
“Talis!”
His name shocked through him, like a voice cutting through a dream to wake him, silence him, focus him. He turned, still backed against the tree, wondering what he had roused with his last cry. He said tightly, more quietly, “I’m listening.”
“Find Burne, take him out of this wood, back to the castle—”
“Across Hunter’s Field? How many dead kings do you want on your mind?”
“What do you think I have been doing for twenty years?” Atrix Wolfe asked him. “I have been running as hard and fast as I could away from this. And here I am again, in the dark of night on the edge of Hunter’s Field, while a king of Pelucir rides to meet my making. You brought me back into this nightmare, Talis Pelucir. You summoned the Hunter and the Wolf, out of twenty years of silence. He has haunted me every moment of those years. If I thought my death would put an end to him now, I would not waste another breath on my life. But I can’t be certain, and I will not leave Pelucir to face him alone again.”
Talis stared at him. “He’s your spell. Under your power.”
“I made him,” the mage said tautly. “Yes. But I do not understand anymore what I made that night on Hunter’s Field.”
Talis was silent. He touched his lenses, trying to see the harrowed face more clearly in the moonlight. The hunting horns of Pelucir sounded again; they called his name with every note. He nodded once, his face bloodless, stunned expressionless in the silvery light. “I will take Burne out of here. But how will you fight this—How can you—What magic can
you use against yourself? Where in all they teach in Chaumenard, do they teach you this?”
“It is the first thing you learn,” the mage said wearily. “To see. To name. To become what you have named.” He turned his head then, not toward the hunters but toward the still trees bordering the field. Talis lurched away from the log, his heart hammering. Atrix held up a hand: Be still, the gesture said, and Talis calmed himself, finding in the ancient, crumbling wood he left, a still place in which to think. “Go,” Atrix breathed, and Talis said, not moving, as the mage eased into moonlight and disappeared,
“Where, in all of Pelucir, can we run from you?”
Moonlight shaped a stag running toward the field. Watching, still motionless, Talis heard horns cry a fanfare for the hart. His breath caught. The stag was white as moonlight and as silent; its horns seemed molded of gold. It cast a white shadow. Hounds slipped after it, night-black and crying fire, leaving bloody prints beneath the trees.
He could not see the Hunter. But he saw the horns of the white stag flame suddenly. It stumbled, caught itself, and ran on, crowned with fire. Trumpets cried again, bright, too close, slightly out of tune. Talis, swallowing horror like a bitter root, slipped into shadows, ran, a shadow of himself, toward the human company.
He heard the howl of the Wolf.
It cried as if to be heard across Pelucir, clear to the mountains of Chaumenard, summoning, warning. The desperation in the cry dragged at Talis. He stopped, bewildered with impulses. If the mage dies, he thought wildly, we are dead. Burne, and I, and the hunters of Pelucir. If I go to help him, I will be helping the one who made the thing that will kill us all. If I don’t, we are dead. If I do…we are dead, he realized, calmer now, his hands clenched. There is nothing I can do. But if he runs away from us, and the Hunter pursues him, we may still live…
He turned, slipped quietly through the trees to find the royal hunt, to flee the wood with Burne before the King understood what ghosts haunted Pelucir that night. What dark making. He heard the King’s horns again, hesitant in the odd stillness, but ringing true. They were answered; the King’s hunt spread raggedly in front of him, he guessed, and, taking his shape so that they would recognize him, he began to run again.
Moonlight flooded the wood, a silvery mist within a tiny clearing, a circle of birch, a disc of grass, a disc of starry sky. Talis ran into it before he realized that, like the hare in moonlight, he was visible to anything that chanced to look. But he reached the other side without setting hounds baying, without the dark moon rising in his path. Still, motion in the motionless wood snagged his eye as he crossed the edge of the circle: a figure emerging out of pale birch, pointing toward him with the gesture of windblown leaves. Moonlight, he told himself, as his head snapped back at it, and the cold sweat pricked his face. Moonlight, it seemed, and leaves: nothing more. Leaves sighed behind him and were still. He quickened his pace.
The Kings horns sounded; he swung toward them with relief. Something brushed across his shoulder; he spun wildly, sound leaping out of him. Leaves, he thought, nothing but leaves. It did not reassure him as he ran, recklessly now, limping a little, in and out of the moonspun shadows. They rustled behind him and were still again. He looked back in spite of himself, and saw the shadows of three hounds, soundless, blood-red and flowing like fire after him.
“Burne!” he shouted desperately, wanting only to find him before the Hunter did. “Burne!” Only horns answered. I’m mage, he thought, fleeing hounds out of another world. I can do better than this.
Drawkcab, a voice said in his head, in warning, but he insisted, arguing with himself: Not every spell is twisted. Some things are simple. Some things are the face they wear. The name they bear.
He concentrated, but found no spells in his head for the problem, only crazed questions. If he became invisible, could the invisible hounds see him? If he became invisible and still, stopped moving, would their fiery shadows, passing over him, mold his shape out of air? If he stopped moving, he knew, he would simply fall, lie on the ground and hear nothing, see nothing, until he had found enough air in the world to breathe, and the pain stopped hammering through him. If he became invisible, would he still feel pain?
A horn called behind him. He looked back, not wanting to look back, knowing what he would see. Three horses as white as moonlight with shadows of moonlight galloped behind the hounds.
“Burne!” he cried again. It came out more plea than shout, but, to his astonishment, he heard his brother’s voice.
“Talis!”
Talis, the wood murmured around him.
“I can’t,” he breathed in answer. He saw movement in the trees ahead, muted color, horses disappearing into shadow. The King’s trumpets sounded again, a noisy, chaotic fanfare.
“Talis! Where are you?”
“Here,” he called to the flickering riders, the odd spark of silver the moonlight struck on metal. The word held little sound. The hounds flowed past him noiselessly, effortlessly; he felt a chill at his back, the breath of a horse with eyes as pale as ice.
He saw Burne then, riding toward him down a long shaft of moonlight. “Talis!” the King shouted. “Talis!” He rode hard, close to his horse’s neck, dodging trees; Talis saw him clearly, running just as hard, but the distance between them never seemed to shorten. Burne began to grow smaller as he rode, his voice more distant.
“Burne!”
“Talis!” the King cried, from a long way, a world away, as he galloped down the moonlight. Then he dissolved into a pale light. Talis, murmuring wordlessly with despair, stumbled and lost his balance. He saw the white shadow of hooves rising above him; the ground struck him before they did.
Eleven
Saro stood in the empty keep.
Something had happened, her eye told her. The light from the one unbroken oil lamp on the mantel showed her a broken bowl and torn books scattered in the empty hearth. What had been on the table lay in pieces all over the floor; the table itself, a massive block of wood with legs as fat as brandy kegs, stood on its head. A rafter had fallen, hung by one end into the room. Pages wrenched out of books covered the floor; the books themselves, spines twisted, bindings ripped away, lay in a pool of water spilled from smashed buckets.
She stood very still, scarcely breathing, trying to become as unobtrusive as shadow, as the door post beside her, cracked where the guards had broken the latch. The single window stared out at the full moon; moonlight limned jagged pieces of glass still clinging to the frame. She heard no sound within the keep; not even the owls spoke.
She took a step forward into the room, felt water lap against her bare feet. Words floated in the water, scraps of letters, sentences. A letter, graceful and tangled around itself, glinted gold in the light, floated next to her foot. She picked it up carefully, flattened it in her palm and studied it. It said nothing. But it was important, a key to things Prince Talis knew, a kind of magic in itself. She put it carefully into her pocket.
This was no place to hide. Something had swept through this room, tearing apart everything in sight. Even the gold and silver cups had been twisted, dented. Even the silver branch of candles lay flattened on the floor, among pieces of mirror and glittering scraps of the prince’s cloth. There was not a single book left whole.
She took another step into the room. What came here once could come again. It had already found the mage and the prince, she guessed. It could find her, in this lonely wreck of a room. And no one would ever know that she was gone. At least, in the kitchen, they might cry her name before she was taken. Here, no owls were left to question anything.
A sigh of breeze through the window spun flame long and ragged through the air; something in what had been shadow caught her eye before the flame subsided. She took another step, another, mouse-quiet, trying not to disturb the water she walked through, while words floated to her feet and clung. There was a book. One book, still whole, in the litter of ripped pages, empty bindings.
Up in the keep he does magic.
He has books. Words he reads and then makes into magic.
Saro is a spell.
The book lay in the underside of the table. It was closed; its plain leather cover said nothing. Inside, it might speak of cows, or recipes for sauces. But it was the only book left whole in the devastated room. Maybe because it spoke of cows. Or maybe because the language it spoke was stronger than what had destroyed everything else in the keep.
She knelt in the mingling of water and lamp oil beside the table, and picked up the book. It seemed oddly light for its size. She opened it. It spoke on every page she turned. Sometimes there were drawings that spoke in ways she understood: herbs, flowers, an upside-down cup, an odd animal that the hunters had never brought back from the wood. Something in it, maybe, could tell her by any means—by fire, or ash, or water, by the position of birds flying across the moon, or the pattern of rings in the wood chopped for the woodpile—how to say her vision: the prince with his lens shattered by an arrow of light. How to speak.
She closed the book. A stronger breeze sent the light shivering, then extinguished it as she rose. She froze, the book held tight under her arm. The window shifted abruptly, left stone wall where the moonlight had been. She waited in the sudden dark, feeling her heartbeat in her throat, unable to move even to fall, though her bones seemed fluid under her skin, and waves of terror prickled over her. But nothing came. After a long time, the window shifted again, finding the moon. She followed the path of moonlight in the dark water to the door.
A voice cried from the hall, as she entered the kitchen again. The tray-mistress lifted her head from the table, stared senselessly down at it, as if wondering what it was doing under her face. Saro slipped the book beneath a cupboard not far from the cauldron, that held stacks of aprons, scrub brushes, towels, soap. The book had survived the fury in the keep; nothing in the kitchen was likely to harm it. Turning, she saw a spit-boy’s eyes on her. But they were dazed, drugged with dreams: Saro, carrying a book into the kitchen, could only be another dream.
The Book of Atrix Wolfe Page 11