The Inquisitives [3] Legacy of the Wolves

by Rockwell, Marsheila

  “Because this was going to be our next stop, anyway.”

  “The shifter camp?”

  Andri nodded.

  “More specifically, the tent of their leader, Ostra Farsight. Who has a lot of explaining to do.”

  Chapter

  THIRTEEN

  Zor, Therendor 26, 998 YK

  Ostra did not look happy to see them. Possibly because they barged into his tent without waiting to be announced, possibly because Irulan had shifted and had him pinned to the ground, her long, thick claws at his throat.

  “So. Would you like to explain why you sent Thorn ahead of us to lay a trap in the graveyard, or should I let Irulan try shaving you with her claws?” Andri realized it wasn’t the most politic of openings, but he didn’t care—the shifter leader had lied to him, making him ache for the fate of a girl who likely never existed, and nearly gotten him and Irulan killed in the process. Had gotten Thorn killed, though they hadn’t told the old shifter that yet.

  “Please.” Ostra looked beseechingly at him. “Let me up, and I’ll explain everything.”

  Irulan glanced at Andri, as if asking what the paladin wanted her to do. In that split second of distraction, the shifter leader rolled and threw her off him. But Greddark was there in an instant, the tip of his short sword forcing the old shifter back down and coming to rest on the jugular where Irulan’s claws had just been.

  “I think not,” Andri said, his voice cold. “You can tell your story from there. But this time, if I sense even a hint of duplicity, I’ll let the dwarf slit your throat.”

  “You’d never make it out of camp alive.”

  Andri shrugged. “I’ll take that risk. Now, talk.”

  The dwarf took his cue well, easing the point of his blade into the soft flesh of Ostra’s neck until a bright drop of blood appeared beneath his blade.

  “All right. All right! I didn’t lie to you about Kelso—Skunk—and Kira. That really did happen. But it was at least twenty years ago, and no one has seen any sign of Skunk since he was driven from the camp. Some people believe he’s living wild in the Burnt Wood, but there have never been any reliable sightings. I’d heard about the white fur Irulan found from Javi when I went to visit him, and I figured it would be easy enough to make you think Skunk was the source of that fur. So I concocted the tale of travelers having seen a white-streaked shifter by Cairn Hill to lure you away, to buy us some time. Thorn’s trap was supposed to keep you there for a few days, but I see it wasn’t successful. Where is he? What have you done with him?”

  Irulan looked too shocked by the mention of her brother to speak, so Andri answered.

  “Thorn is dead,” he said, making no attempt to cushion his angry words. Thorn’s death could have been avoided if the camp leader had simply told the truth from the beginning. Another life lost unnecessarily in the pursuit of this killer. “What you didn’t realize when you made up your little tale of a vengeful shifter is that there was something evil haunting those cairns, just not something living. A wight, who killed and turned Thorn before we even got there. We were lucky to make it out alive.”

  Ostra’s face blanched.

  “Thorn is … dead?” He sagged against the floor and all the fight drained out of him. “He was my sister-son. I raised him from a youngling when she died. He would have been leader after me.” The old shifter closed his eyes against tears, which spilled out onto his cheeks to form tiny puddles of mud on the dirt floor.

  Andri motioned to Irulan and Greddark to let the shifter leader up. He did not think the old shifter would lie this time. His grief was too strong to be feigned.

  Ostra sat up, knuckling his eyes, a curiously childlike gesture. But when he looked up at Andri, there was nothing childish about his mute sorrow. He was just an old, tired shifter who had lost one too many loved ones.

  “You said you were trying to buy time,” Andri prodded him gently. “For what? Or who?”

  “Old Quillion. He’s a werewolf, laired up in the ruins of Shadukar, half-crazy from age and the things they did to him during the Purge. When the murders first started happening, we feared he might be to blame, especially since so many of them occurred on nights when several moons were full.”

  Andri dropped into the nearest chair, stunned. There had been nothing about full moons in the files he’d gotten from the Bishop. Had Maellas even known? And even though Andri had himself worried a lycanthrope might be to blame, he hadn’t tried to track down an orrery to correlate the dates of the murders. Granted, he’d only been in Aruldusk for a few days and orreries weren’t that easy to come by, even with access to a Cardinal’s coffers, but he should have looked into it after questioning Irvallo. But he thought he would have more time and, if he were honest with himself, he hadn’t really wanted to know. He’d allowed his own personal fears to get in the way of the task the Keeper had given him. By the Flame, he’d been a fool!

  Ostra continued, oblivious to Andri’s silent self-recrimination.

  “We tried to hunt him down, even got close to snaring him once, but he vanished before my trackers could spring their trap. It was then that we realized he had some sort of teleportation device—a ring, we think—which of course made tracking him next to impossible. But even if he hadn’t had such a powerful item, Quillion lived in Shadukar for years before it was razed. We weren’t going to find him unless he wanted to be found. So we watched, and waited, and prayed that we were wrong. And then you showed up—Andri Aeyliros, son of the famous Alestair Aeyliros, Scourge of the Moontouched. Why else would the Keeper send you if she did not suspect a lycanthrope? So I sent you south, and runners north, to try one last time to find Quillion and determine his guilt or innocence before the Silver Flame got hold of him.”

  “If you think he’s guilty, why in the name of the Flame are you trying to protect him?” Irulan asked, her disgust and outrage evident. “It’s only a matter of time before Maellas starts executing the shifters he’s imprisoned, and even less than that before the people of Aruldusk start lynching us in the streets! Is the life of some insane werewolf worth even one shifter’s death?”

  Ostra looked at her sadly. “I know your clan has never believed that being descended from lycanthropes is a gift, Irulan, but they are our ancestors, and deserve our reverence. And aside from honoring our beginnings, we know what the Inquisitors did to him. Their brutality was unconscionable. Unspeakable. It was a miracle of the Host that Quillion survived at all, let alone escaped. If it hadn’t been for the Path of the Howl, he wouldn’t have. So even if he was responsible for the murders, there was no way we were going to put him through that again. A nice, clean death with a silver-tipped arrow through the heart. We owe him that much.”

  “The Path of the Howl?” Greddark asked from his place by the tent flap, where he was watching for the rescue attempt they all knew would be coming—they hadn’t exactly snuck in to Ostra’s tent, after all, nor had the camp leader been particularly quiet in his protestations of innocence.

  “It’s a network of safehouses, tunnels, and hidden paths that crisscross each of the Five Nations,” Andri explained. He had heard of its existence from his father, who had actually helped to fill in one such tunnel beneath Thalingard—thankfully, long before the pyromancer had cause to try and use such an escape route himself. “It was used to transport lycanthropes and shifters beyond the reach of the Church during the Purge. Now I suppose, if it’s used at all, it’s the province of smugglers and other criminals.”

  “Well, I hate to break up this little history lesson,” Greddark said, drawing his sword, “but they’re here.”

  Andri rose from his seat.

  “How many?”

  “Ten that I can see, so that probably means twenty. Longbows, a few crossbows. The ones circling around the back will have blades.”

  “I’ll deal with them,” Irulan said, drawing her own sword and disappearing into the interior of the tent.

  Ostra heaved himself up from the dirt floor. “Let me go out and t
alk to them. Once they see I’m safe, they’ll back off.”

  Andri didn’t particularly want to let the duplicitous shifter out of his sight, but he didn’t have a ranged weapon, and Irulan had left her bow, unstrung, strapped to their horse’s saddle. As if reading his mind, Greddark pulled a wand out of his multi-pocketed coat.

  “Go ahead. But I’m going to have this wand trained at your back the entire time. One false move and you’ll find your guts blasted all over the campfires. And I don’t think you want roasted innards to be that last thing you smell before you die, especially when they’re yours.”

  Ostra sighed. Defeat hung about him like a miasma.

  “There’s no need for threats. If I wanted you dead, I would have impaled myself on your blade and let the tribe do the rest.”

  He squared his shoulders and raised his chin. Greddark stood aside to let him pass, keeping the wand’s crystalline tip pointed at the shifter the whole time.

  The shifter leader exited the tent, both hands raised in a calming gesture. Greddark kept him covered from behind the dubious safety of the tent flap.

  “Peace, my children. I am unharmed. There is no need for weapons or violence. Go back to your tents.”

  “We saw the furless storm into your tent!” a shifter shouted. “We heard you yell!”

  Furless. Andri hadn’t heard that particular insult before.

  “A misunderstanding,” said Ostra. “Nothing more. All is well. The furless and Bennin’s heir have my blessing. They are not to be harmed.”

  There was low murmuring and grumbling that Andri could not decipher. Finally, someone said, with obvious reluctance, “As you wish, Father.”

  “He’s coming back,” Greddark said. “The shifters are dispersing.”

  “Not all of them,” came Irulan’s reply.

  Andri turned to find her yanking another female shifter by the braid into the sitting area. The shifter was no warrior. Her long skirts and apron made that clear, as did the heavy pan Irulan carried in her own hand now in place of her sword.

  “I found her trying to sneak in through the back. It’s Leata, Ostra’s first wife.”

  “Leata!” Ostra exclaimed as he entered the tent. The shifter woman twisted violently in Irulan’s grasp and Irulan released her with a curse. Leata ran into her husband’s arms.

  After a moment, she pulled back from his embrace to look him over. “Did they hurt you? I’ll have Thorn hunt them down and kill them!”

  At the name of his nephew, Ostra let out a long sigh and pulled his wife close again, burying his face in her thick braid.

  “Thorn is dead, my love. Killed by foul undead while carrying out a special task for me. Irulan and her friends brought me word of his fate.”

  “D-dead?” came Leata’s muffled response. “Oh, Ostra! Half the Circle, and now Thorn? Why is the Host punishing us so?”

  Ostra shushed her and there was nothing but the sound of her quiet weeping for long moments.

  Andri looked away, uncomfortable with the show of grief, and the part he had played in causing it. If only he’d been willing to pursue the idea of a lycanthrope earlier, Thorn’s grisly fate might have been avoided. But, no—he would still have come to question the shifter leader, and Ostra would still have sent him southward, only this time with a tale of a lycanthrope lairing among the graves instead of an outcast from the tribe. Thorn’s death was Ostra’s fault, not his. But somehow, knowing that didn’t make him feel any less guilty.

  As the shifter woman sobbed and Ostra murmured quiet words of comfort in her ear, Greddark kept watch out the tent flap. Irulan looked embarrassed and studiously avoided staring at the couple, casting her gaze about the tent and finally settling for contemplating the claws on her feet.

  At last, Leata pulled away from her husband, wiping the tears away with the corner of her apron. She turned to Andri and Irulan, not leaving the protective circle of her husband’s embrace.

  “Thank you for bringing us word of Thorn’s passing. Did he die bravely?” Her voice nearly broke on the last word.

  Andri exchanged a quick glance with Ostra. He had no idea how the shifter had died the first time, and he didn’t think Leata would want to know the circumstances of his second passing.

  “He fought well,” he said, hoping it would be enough.

  Leata nodded, seemingly satisfied.

  “They’re going after Quillion now,” Ostra said, holding her tightly to him as her eyes widened in shock.

  “No!”

  “It’s the only way, Leata. He’ll never come out for us, but for … them, he might.” It was a brief pause, almost imperceptible, but Andri caught it. The shifter had been about to say something else, but substituted “them” at the last second.

  What had he meant to say? Andri wondered, guessing it was important, but having no way to ferret the knowledge out. Not for the first time, he wished his abilities allowed him to detect actual thoughts, not just honesty and intent.

  Ostra looked back up at Andri.

  “Promise me, if you find him, and he’s guilty, you won’t let them torture him again.”

  They hadn’t discussed going after the old werewolf, but of course that was the next logical step in their investigation. It should have been the first, that accusing voice in the back of his mind whispered, but he ignored it.

  Andri had heard tales from his father about what the Church had done to lycanthropes during the Purge. Barbaric tortures—skinning them alive with silver blades, sprinkling belladonna over their open wounds, or binding them in close-fitting suits of silver while in their humanoid forms and then forcing them to change, their bodies trying painfully to shift into a shape the holy metal would not allow. He could understand why the shifters would want to protect the werewolf from that doom, especially here in Thrane, where he’d be found guilty regardless of whether he’d committed the murders or not. Andri wouldn’t wish such a fate on anyone—except perhaps his father.

  “I promise,” he said.

  They emptied the contents of Andri’s trunk into sacks and traded the intricately carved chest to a shifter merchant for supplies and two more horses. If the others were surprised by the silver manacles, various extractions of belladonna, and other accoutrements of a lycanthrope hunter that Andri transferred from the trunk, they didn’t say anything, though Greddark looked at him speculatively. He wondered how much more curious the dwarf would be if he knew Andri never went anywhere without them—though he’d never had cause to use them and prayed fervently that he never would.

  Irulan was more concerned with trying to calm the nervous nag they’d purchased for her. She was not happy about having to ride her own mount, but Shadukar was over two hundred fifty miles away following the Orien trade route—trying to ride double on his warhorse would have stretched a trip that was already going to take nearly a week into two, and that was time none of them had to waste.

  Ostra had offered the services of his best trackers, but Andri had politely declined, while Irulan opined that they’d had more than enough “help” from the shifter leader and his people. Instead, they had quizzed the trackers on likely lairing spots within the ruins of Shadukar. Armed with that knowledge and several detailed maps of the city as it had been before it was razed, they set off for what had once been known as the Jewel of the Sound.

  Leaving the shifter encampment just after noon, they pushed the horses and got in a full day’s ride by evening, but were still only halfway to Angwar Keep, their first stop on the way to Shadukar. The outpost had been hit hard and often during the Last War, located as it was just across the river from Cyre—or what had once been Cyre. Now the only enemy facing the keep was the dead gray mist of the Mournland, ever-present and oppressive, reaching up into the sky like a wall of stone that kept the residents of the fort from ever witnessing a true dawn. Of course, since most of the inhabitants were warforged, they probably didn’t care.

  They pitched camp several hundred feet to the west of the road, wanting to put a
s much distance as possible between them and the mist that lingered just beyond the river’s opposite bank. Andri and Greddark tended to the mounts while a surly Irulan complained about saddle sores and prepared dinner. Over a mixture of fried eggs, salted pork, and tubers that the shifter had spiced liberally with thrakel, the trio compared notes.

  The dwarf was intrigued by the tuft of fur Irulan had found and asked to examine it, though his perusal yielded nothing new. When Andri had finished the tale of his and Irulan’s investigation, Greddark shared what he and Zoden had learned. As he did so, Andri found himself nodding at several points, and shaking his head in confusion at others. Why had Greddark’s contact included the scrap of paper with the list of spell components on it? There was nothing linking it to the murders, save proximity to Desekane’s body, which had been found in one of the dirtiest parts of the city. Desekane had not been a spellcaster—did the dwarf’s contact think the killer was?

  And what was the significance of the smudges of silvery dust? It sounded like silverburn, but that was so commonplace as to be useless as a clue to the killer’s identity—Andri carried a small container of it himself, for use in his private prayers.

  And if the paper was somehow related to the murderer, what spell or potion were the ingredients for? He knew chameleon skin was a component used in a spell to obscure objects from scrying, but could such a spell be used to obscure a person? Is that why the Keeper’s wizards had been unable to locate the killer with their magic?

  Thinking of the Keeper brought Andri back to Greddark’s contact. Who could it be? Someone high up in the local Church hierarchy, that much was obvious, but who? Not Maellas, surely, but someone close to the Bishop—Xanin, perhaps? The thought disturbed Andri. It was further evidence of the corruption that ran through every level of the Church like the silver veins in its ubiquitous black marble. Though he had to admit, in this case the evil had served a larger good—or would, if they caught the killer.

  But while the information the dwarf provided painted a clearer picture of that killer, it raised more questions than it answered, and the murderer’s motive still remained obfuscated. Why would an old werewolf from Shadukar want to kill Throneholders in Aruldusk, especially when the murders were being blamed on the same shifters that were trying to protect him? Was his supposed madness really enough of an explanation? If anything, wouldn’t Quillion want to kill followers of the same Flame that had burned him so awfully so many years ago? Why attack people who wanted the Flame to gutter and die out just as much as he did?