by David Gross
Tal could bear no more. He rushed forward and knocked the wolf’s head off Ennis. “What in the Nine Hells are you doing?”
Lommy peeked out from the ettin’s gaping mouth and peeped in surprise, his tiny voice muffled by the mask. Sivana smiled nonchalantly and lifted the ettin’s head off of the tasloi, who scampered up the back wall to disappear into the balcony. “Just goofing off, Tal. We were thinking of doing a children’s play next month.”
“Who told you?” demanded Tal. “Was it Quickly?”
“Told us what?” said Sivana. Ennis’s face had turned from a shocked pale to a deep scarlet. Tal knew Sivana was lying.
“It was supposed to be a secret!” Tal shook the big wolf mask at her.
“It’s still a secret,” said Sivana, abandoning the pretense. “Nobody outside the playhouse knows.”
“Nobody inside the playhouse was meant to know, either.”
“You told Quickly, Otter, and Lommy, but not the rest of us?”
“I needed the cage, so I had to tell Quickly. Lommy and Otter live here.” Tal let out an enormous sigh. “I can’t believe she told you.”
“Don’t blame her,” said Sivana. “She let it slip one night. You know how she talks in her sleep.”
“I knew it!” said Chaney, storming onto the stage. When everyone looked blankly at him, he explained, “You know, the stories about all you players sleeping with all the other players.” Still, everyone just stared at him. At last he shrugged. “I felt left out.”
“I just haven’t gotten to you yet, darling,” said Sivana, patting Chaney on the bottom. He brightened at once.
Tal would not let them change the subject. “Quickly had no right to tell you.”
“It’s not as if we wouldn’t have figured it out. You’re missing only when the moon is full, and you’re always missing when the moon is full. There’s one coming up soon, isn’t there? I can tell, because you’re always cranky a few days before.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” growled Tal. “I thought you were my friends.”
“We are your friends,” said Ennis. The big man’s voice cracked, and he looked near to crying. His childlike fear of confrontation made the other players teasingly call him Quickly’s Puppy. “Come on, Tal,” he pleaded. “You know you can trust everyone here. We’re like family.”
Tal choked on his reply.
“Maybe not the best analogy you could have picked,” said Chaney, grimacing.
“What are you children carrying on about?” Quickly emerged from one of the trapdoors to the Abyss below the stage. She held a bulging sack in both hands while clamping her pipe between her teeth. “If you’ve got so much energy, you can help repaint the rest of these masks.”
All eyes turned to Quickly, then back to Tal to see how he’d react. He crushed the wolf’s head mask in his hands and flung the fragments on the floor at Quickly’s feet.
The pipe fell from Quickly’s mouth, and she let the sack of masks slip through her hands onto the stage floor. “Tal …” she began.
Tal whipped around and stalked off the stage. He had thrown open the back door by the time Chaney caught up with him. He let the little man through before slamming the door behind them.
Chaney took one look at Tal’s face and shut his mouth tight. They walked quickly and in silence for several blocks before Tal cooled off enough to speak.
“I might as well go to Stormweather and get it over with.”
“You want me to come along?” asked Chaney.
“No, there’s no telling how long Thamalon will want to bellow at me this time. Besides, you annoy him.”
“Want to meet up later? I’ll fetch Feena, and we …”
“No!” said Tal. “The day’s been bad enough without another lecture.”
“What makes you think she’ll lecture you? Maybe she can—”
“Dark and empty, I said no!”
“Take it easy, Tal. It’s me. I’m just trying to help.”
“You can help by leaving me alone,” snapped Tal.
“Sure, sure,” said Chaney, holding up his hands and retreating. “Whatever you say.”
Tal seethed, furious at … he didn’t know what. Thamalon, Quickly, Rusk, maybe—or himself. By the time he realized he owed Chaney an apology, his friend was gone. After all of the day’s reversals, he hoped at least that Chaney would remain his friend.
Tal pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Then he turned west and headed to Stormweather alone.
CHAPTER 11
BLACK BLOOD
Summer, 1371 DR
Darrow did not escape the People of the Black Blood. He had run less than five miles from the lodge before the wolves dragged him to the ground. In the panic that seized him upon first seeing his pursuers, he dropped his useless sword and begged for his life. His screams for mercy did nothing to save him from the ripping claws of the werewolves. Nor did his blubbering pleas stop the hungry mouths from feasting on his body. Only as his lifeblood seeped into the soft ground of the Arch Wood did salvation arrive.
It came in the form of a silver wolf.
The three-legged beast chased the other predators from the kill, then sat beside Darrow’s dying body and looked down into his face. As Darrow looked up at the big wolf, it shifted back into the form of Rusk, the Huntmaster.
“The Hunt is over,” he declared. Then with a chant to Malar, he pressed his burning hands on Darrow’s gaping wounds and sealed them. He cast spell after spell, until at last Darrow could breathe.
“Why?” Darrow whispered. “Why did you save me?”
Rusk chuckled deep in his chest. “Because I have use for you.”
During his first month among the People of the Black Blood, Darrow was everyone’s servant. He fetched wood and water, cleared the fanged circle, and scraped the hides of deer and boars for crude tanning. If someone told him to do a task, he made himself useful.
At night he huddled in a corner of the lodge while most of the pack roamed their territory. A simple smoke hole served as a chimney for the fire pit, which was flanked by two rows of rough-hewn timbers supporting the sod roof. Various pack members had carved their names or marks in the wood over the years. Others with some talent had engraved scenes of humans and wolves hunting together. One depicted a passionate embrace between a dire wolf and a woman. Darrow found the image at once revolting and compelling.
The Huntmaster’s inner sanctum was divided from the rest by an old tapestry depicting scenes of wolves and humans hunting and living together as an antlered god held his cloak to form the night sky above them. Even when Rusk was away, Darrow did not dare part the fabric to peer inside.
When the werewolves returned to sleep away the daylight, Darrow went outside to perform his chores alone. He hated the smell of the lodge when the pack was there. The smoke stung his eyes, and the odor of so many dirty bodies reminded him of his father’s pigsty. Even as a boy he knew he wanted nothing to do with farm life, and this was far worse. He was living among monsters.
Soon he learned that he had become one of them.
After his first transformation, Darrow was sick for days. He remembered little of what occurred those three nights, but the days were full of exhausted cramps and bloody retching. No one tended to him in his misery, not even Rusk, who had saved his life. He was too afraid to ask questions, and no one offered any answers.
“At least I’m still alive,” he told himself. But he did not know why or for how long.
A few days after his change, Rusk answered one of those questions. He led Darrow a short distance from the lodge, where they sat on a grassy knoll.
“Tell me about the Malveens,” he said.
Darrow nodded, eager to be useful. “What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” said Rusk. “Start with what they want with Talbot Uskevren.”
Despite Rusk’s interest in Darrow, the other werewolves did not accept him as one of their own. Even as the days grew long and
the nights warm, the pack spoke to him when necessary, but never in anything approaching the rough camaraderie they enjoyed among themselves. They were a community unto themselves, albeit a savage one. Among the men and women were a few children. They frightened Darrow more than any others, for they had never known a life apart from the Hunt. How much more monstrous than their parents would they become?
“What do you and Rusk talk about?” asked Sorcia one day.
Rusk had not forbidden him to tell, but Darrow sensed it was best not to reveal too much. “The city,” he said.
Sorcia must have detected his reluctance, for she let the subject drop. “Rusk usually leads us throughout the forest this time of year,” she said, “but now all he does is talk with you and pore over those scrolls. What’s in them, I wonder? ”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Darrow.
That was the truth. Rusk had never shown them to him, and he had never asked about them. Unless Rusk was secretly illiterate, Darrow could not imagine what was taking him so long to finish them. Perhaps they contained spells the Huntmaster could not comprehend, or maybe he did not like what he read in the scrolls.
Sometimes Rusk spent hours watching the night sky through the clearing above the fanged temple. He rose before dusk to observe the long shadows that fell from the teeth, comparing their patterns to drawings in the Black Wolf Scrolls. Whatever he saw there often sent him into a quiet rage. The other People could smell his displeasure and avoided him at those times, and Darrow soon learned to discern the almost imperceptible sourness. Before his transformation, Darrow would never have detected such a faint odor. Now it was almost overpowering, a warning to stay clear of the Huntmaster.
It was increasingly clear that Darrow’s submissive behavior had planted him firmly at the bottom of the pack hierarchy. Ronan’s bullying the night he was transformed was only a harbinger of the abuses that followed. They pushed past him at the lodge entrance and stared him down around the fire when he dared to speak.
Sometimes Darrow looked up to see Rusk watching him after another member of the pack had cowed him, and he felt ashamed. Other times, Sorcia shook her head as Darrow stepped aside for Ronan or one of the other big nightwalkers.
Despite the hazing, Darrow tried to feel like one of the pack. His routine shifted gradually from day to night, when he would sit around the fire working leather and fur, cutting tough strips for laces, and sewing his own rough clothes. The lodge held communal tools for cutting firewood and repairing the building itself, but the People had few personal belongings.
The exceptions were weapons and mates. Most of the females chose a single male companion, though a few remained independent or concealed their affairs. At first, Darrow assumed that Sorcia was Rusk’s mate, but she never entered his sanctum, and he never saw them go off alone.
If they had been partners, it would have soon become obvious, for there was no modesty among the People. As many as four or five pairs would copulate among the sleeping pack some mornings. Darrow turned his back when it happened, but the lovers’ moans made him restless and keenly uncomfortable. When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed of stealing into House Malveen, taking the key, and opening the gate to Maelin’s cell. When they escaped together, she could prove her gratitude without the coercion of a cell.
He knew it was unrealistic to dream about rescuing Maelin. He realized Radu would have slain her the day he returned from disposing of him among Rusk’s pack. Still, he held her image and the thought of her rescue as a sort of talisman against despair. If he could dream about a selfless act, then surely he had not become like the monsters that surrounded him.
After another month of learning to stalk his prey and throw a spear, Darrow brought down his first stag. When Morrel slung the carcass over his own shoulders, Darrow thought it was a friendly gesture, but the werewolf carried it back to the lodge and claimed it as his own. When Darrow protested, Morrel sent him spinning to the ground with a powerful backhanded blow.
Darrow bristled but stayed down. He kept his eyes low, and Morrel ate the steaming heart when it came off the fire.
Afterward, Darrow grew sullen and sat far from the fire pit. Sorcia was the only one who would come near him.
“How am I supposed to act?” he complained to her. “I do what they say, but they take it away.”
“Should a sheep complain of its stolen fleece?”
“I am not a sheep,” said Darrow.
“Then act like a wolf,” said Sorcia.
Six days later, as four of them were stalking a wounded boar, Karnek cuffed Darrow for making too much noise. Darrow balled a fist and punched Karnek in the face. The lean man laughed and licked the blood from his lip.
Then he proceeded to beat Darrow half to death.
When Darrow could stand again, they resumed the stalk without a word about the fight. That night, after they roasted the boar, Brigid handed Darrow a hunter’s portion.
“But I lost,” he complained to Sorcia later.
She shrugged. “Yet you fought, little wolf.”
Later, she led him out into the woods, running ahead until he chased her. They ran until Darrow’s breath came hard and ragged, and she let him catch her. When he grabbed her around the waist, she twisted in his grasp and struck him across the mouth.
He tasted blood and felt a growl rise in his chest. He released her and raised a hand to strike back, but Sorcia swept his legs out from under him, and he fell to the ground. Before she could dart away, he grabbed her ankle and pulled her down beside him.
She rolled atop him and grabbed his hair with both hands, holding his head against the forest floor. Her naked thighs were hot against his chest. He gripped her legs and would not let her go. She opened his mouth with her tongue, and their kiss exploded in his brain. Pleasure arched his back and filled his body with liquid fire.
Her body was incandescent in the moonlight, her beauty almost painfully unreal. Darrow closed his eyes and imagined her with Maelin’s dark hair and heart-shaped face. The image galvanized his body, contracting every muscle.
Darrow imagined they lay on the straw floor of a dark cell, the door open beside them. He felt her fingers run over his perspiring skin, scratching lightly over his stomach before peeling away his breeches.
He kept his eyes closed as she tossed aside her own clothes before settling back atop him. Their bodies joined slowly, and she guided him with practiced hands. Breathless, he followed her lead without question.
Afterward, they lay a while upon the ground, watching the sky grow lighter through the trees. When Darrow opened his mouth to speak, she stopped it with a savage kiss. They gathered their clothes and walked back to the lodge, where Sorcia walked away to take her place among the sleeping bodies. There was no question of his joining her. He curled up alone by the wall. He didn’t mind it. In his dreams, he was not sleeping alone.
When the High Hunt was less crowded at Midsummer, Darrow thought little of it. It bothered those closest to Rusk the most. Ronan, Karnek, and Brigid wore dour faces for days afterward. They were the closest Rusk had to disciples, and their moods often reflected his.
More worrisome than the lightly attended feast were the rumors that arose in the tendays that followed. Hunters returned from their ranging with stories of an unseen watcher in the woods. Even as they stalked their prey, the People felt the presence of something stalking them. Those who doubled back or laid ambushes found their efforts futile. Morrel joked that it was a ghost from a hunting party the pack had destroyed last winter. The other People repeated the joke until Rusk cuffed one of them for it. Why it offended him, no one understood.
Darrow began spending more time away from the lodge, ranging with two or three other hunters. When they found signs of human intrusion in their territory, they tracked the source. Those they recognized or who showed a symbol of the Beastlord were friends, and the hunters asked if they wanted for meat. If so, the hunters tarried long enough to bring down a stag or a wild boar.
Thos
e who did not revere the Beastlord were given an hour’s lead before the hunters followed. Darrow was present for three such intrusions, and none of them escaped the pack.
Any qualms Darrow felt about killing human prey were outweighed by his joy to be alive. Better still, he was a member of the pack, no longer a lackey to the monstrous Stannis Malveen. Best of all, his muscles were becoming lean and hard from ranging the woods. His senses grew keener still, and he could hear every sound in the forest if he remained still. The other hunters taught him what all the new smells meant. Now he could tell when prey was sick or with child, and he left them for more suitable quarry.
Even so, for nights after helping pull down a human trespasser, Darrow dreamed of fleeing down dark corridors. Shadows flew after him, curling around the torches until there was only darkness. Maelin’s voice cried out for help, but long before he could reach her, a hideous wheezing sound came up behind him. He fumbled with the key, almost losing it in the darkness. If he could only release her from her horrid captors, his own guilt would be absolved. Before he could put the key in the lock, he felt clammy hands upon his shoulders before falling through the veil of sleep to wake panting and cold with sweat.
He felt the same way after the nights of the moon, when the beast emerged to take command of his body, reshaping Darrow to its own carnal desires. In the mornings, Darrow could barely remember running with the pack, though faint smells and dim images clouded his memory.
“How do you change when you will?” he asked Sorcia.
Some of the nightwalkers could change only during the full moon, or when Rusk evoked their transformation through the power of Malar. Darrow was among the latter, and he envied the others.
“Some were born with the gift,” said Sorcia. “They are true nightwalkers. For them, it is as natural as speaking their mother tongue. They learned it so long ago that they can’t remember not having it.”