The Inquisitives [3] Legacy of the Wolves

by Rockwell, Marsheila

  He laid his hands on the shifter’s ruined chest, closed his eyes and prayed, fervently invoking the healing power of the Flame.

  Nothing happened.

  No argent light or soft heat spreading out from his hands, no divine presence, nothing but warm, wet fur beneath his palms, cooling quickly in the chill night air.

  He tried again, his brow furrowing with the intensity of his intercession, as if he could heal Quillion through force of will alone. As if the Flame were his to command, instead of the other way around.

  It was futile, and he knew it, but he didn’t stop until he felt Irulan’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Andri, let him go. He wouldn’t thank you for bringing him back even if you could.”

  The paladin opened his eyes and looked over at the shifter woman, who was kneeling beside him on the ground, her own gaze focused on Quillion.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, the slight quaver in her voice making his heart wrench. Because he had put it there.

  Irulan reached over and lifted Quillion’s left hand. “Do you see? The silver claw? He was a member of my clan. Probably Bennin’s own son, Rave of the Silver Quill.”

  Greddark dug out his wand from within his coat and now whispered something in Dwarven. The multifaceted crystal began to glow, infusing the stand of trees with a hazy, indistinct light. Andri knew it was for his benefit. Both Irulan and the dwarf could see well in the dark. It was a kindness he could have done without, though. The light made Quillion’s dead eyes gleam. Andri knew he was only imagining the accusation he saw there, but the knowledge did not allay the guilt.

  “Who’s Bennin?” Greddark asked.

  “The greatest shifter hero who ever lived,” Irulan said, her tone regaining some of its usual acerbity at the dwarf’s ignorance. “There was a time when the Church did not differentiate between the weretouched and the moontouched. Bennin changed that. He was a renowned lycanthrope slayer who became famous during the Purge for his efforts on behalf of the Church, hunting and killing more than fifty of the moontouched with his claws alone—claws fashioned magically of pure, holy silver. The stories tell of how he led a contingent of brave knights and clerics into the Demon Wastes to destroy a cult of lycanthropes who were set on taking revenge against the Church. The mission was betrayed by a member of the expedition who was, unbeknownst to Bennin, infected by a wererat’s bite.” Irulan’s voice had taken on a sing-song quality, and she rocked slightly on her knees, her eyes half-lidded as she recited the shifter tale. “The Betrayer led Bennin and his men into a fatal ambush. The battle was fierce and bloody and raged beneath the light of no fewer than five full moons. But finally, the Silverclaw and the three most powerful leaders of the cult were all who remained. Bennin fought with speed, cunning, and above all, honor, but he was overmatched and died beneath the jaws of an old werebear. But not before reaching into the lycanthrope’s chest with his silver claws and ripping out the creature’s still-beating heart. His sacrifice broke the power of the cult and ended the Church’s persecution of shifters. His son, Rave of the Silver Quill, was the first to set his father’s story to paper, and now all of Khorvaire knows of Bennin’s greatness.” She stopped rocking and looked askance at Greddark. “All of Khorvaire except for the Mror Holds, that is.”

  The dwarf shrugged. “Sorry. Must have skipped that lesson.”

  “I still don’t understand what that has to do with Quillion,” Andri said, finally reaching out to close the dead shifter’s eyes and free himself from that unseeing stare.

  “Bennin left three legacies for his descendants: his name, his silver claws—we all have the one claw tipped in silver out of respect for him—and his hatred for the moontouched. Quillion—whom I believe was really Rave of the Silver Quill—was infected with lycanthropy, just like the Betrayer. He would not want to live so afflicted. None of us would. It’s probably what drove him crazy.” She looked up into Andri’s eyes, her expression earnest. “He wasn’t trying to save me when he jumped in front of your sword, Andri. He was trying to die. And you helped him do that. You did him a favor, one I hope you would do for me, if it ever came to that.”

  Andri wanted desperately to believe her, to accept the forgiveness she was offering. But watching Quillion—Rave—die by his hand, and change from a murdering, tormented lycanthrope to a tired old shifter, right at his feet … it struck too close to home. It was like watching his parents die all over again, a sin for which there was no remission.

  “Favor or not, you just killed our only suspect, before we even had a chance to question him,” Greddark pointed out with a frown.

  Irulan shook her head. “It wasn’t him. Look at his legs. There’s no wound like the one Zoden described.”

  Both Andri and Greddark looked where she indicated. Though the shifter’s corpse still bore the evidence of Andri’s blow, there was no other mark on him.

  “So that means there’s another lycanthrope out there?” the dwarf asked, aghast. “Aren’t those things supposed to be rare? Especially in Thrane?”

  “More than one, I think,” Irulan replied. “Quillion mentioned a pack, hiding in ‘the forest that burned.’ I think he may have meant the Greensward.”

  “What?” Greddark said, grabbing for his sword, his eyes darting to the surrounding trees.

  “No. He didn’t mean the Greensward,” Andri said, closing his eyes against the pain of memory, and realization. Would he never be free of his father? “He meant the Burnt Wood.”

  “How do you know that?” Greddark asked, his voice sharp with curiosity. Or suspicion.

  Andri opened his eyes to look from Irulan to the dwarf, and back again.

  “Because,” he said at last, “That’s where my father went to hunt a werewolf five years ago. Right before he turned into one himself.”

  “I think you better tell us the whole story,” Greddark said, his hand still hovering near his hilt.

  Andri nodded. They deserved to know the truth. “Can we do it somewhere else?”

  “Back to the pond?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Andri stood and retrieved his sword from where he had thrown it. In the moonlight, the black blood looked like tarnish on the silver blade. Shoving the thought aside, he wiped the sword clean on a patch of dead grass and sheathed it.

  When he turned back, Irulan still knelt beside her great-grandfather’s body. Andri swallowed the lump sticking in his throat and walked over to her.

  “Do you want me to give him last rites?” he asked as gently as he could.

  Irulan shook her head without bothering to look at him. Perhaps because she couldn’t stand to.

  “Rave never embraced the Silver Flame the way Bennin did. They say he always blamed the Church for his father’s death. Besides”—she glanced up at him at last—“you already gave him the only absolution he would have wanted.”

  Greddark started trying to cover Rave’s body with brush, to make an impromptu cairn, but Irulan told him not to bother. The rats would find him when his absence eroded their fear of the place, and they would return his body to the earth. It was the way.

  As they led the horses back to the dried up pond in silence, Andri prayed for the strength to tell his tale. He’d only recounted it twice before—once in the immediate aftermath of the murders, and once to the Keeper. Though only a child, the depth of Jaela Daran’s compassion had utterly disarmed him. While she had held his much larger hands in her own, he had wept for his loss for the first and only time.

  The embers of their fire were still warm, and Greddark had a new blaze going in a matter of moments. They sat around the campfire, the dwarf watching him expectantly while Irulan stared into the flames, lost in her own thoughts.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Andri nodded. He took a deep, fortifying breath, made the sign of the Flame, and began his tale.

  “It was 993 YK. My father, Alestair, had just returned from a successful hunt in the Burnt Wood. He even brought me the claws of th
e werewolf he’d slain.” Andri reached up to touch the necklace he wore, his fingers running lightly along the chain, touching each claw in turn before closing around the silver holy symbol they framed. “He’d been scratched by the lycanthrope but took belladonna immediately and was sure he’d escaped infection.”

  As Andri looked into the dancing orange flames, he could see his father’s confident expression and hear the pyromancer’s laugh as he dismissed Andri’s fears, as clearly as if the paladin were once again in the room with his parents. Of course, he hadn’t been a paladin then. He hadn’t learned of Cardinal Brynde’s decision until the following week. The same day that he learned that his father’s certainty had been misplaced.

  “Nine days later, on the night of the next full moon, we found out he was wrong.…”

  Wir, Lharvion 18, 993 YK

  … Andri walked out of the Cardinal’s chambers as calmly as he could, nodding to the beaming secretary as he passed, but once he was out in the hall, he couldn’t contain his joy any longer.

  With a whoop that earned him startled glances from several passers-by, Andri took off at a run for his parents’ quarters—he couldn’t wait to tell them. They lived on the third floor of the aptly-named Tower of St. Valtros. The saint had been the first paladin called to serve the Silver Flame, an honorable tradition that Andri had been deemed worthy to continue.

  He’d made it! After four hard years of study, he’d passed his final tests at the Psalm of the Flame Seminary, and tonight Cardinal Brynde had informed him that he was being accepted into the Order of Templars on Victory Day, just three weeks hence. He was going to be a paladin!

  He knew his mother would be a little disappointed. As a high-ranking priestess in the Order of Ministers, she had hoped her only child would follow in her footsteps and become a priest. But his Uncle Ajiuss, a Templar himself, would be bursting with pride, and his father would be utterly ecstatic. Andri couldn’t wait to see Alestair’s face when he told him the news!

  He took the servants’ corridors, and his pace brought him to the west-facing tower within minutes, though he had to dodge a group of maids, nearly upsetting their laundry cart. But even their angry recriminations could not dampen his mood.

  He had done it! He didn’t think he’d ever been happier or more proud than he was at this moment. He bounded up the stairs as if he wore boots of jumping.

  Andri was in such a hurry, he almost stumbled across something long and hard lying at the top of the third floor landing. He kicked it with his toe, sending it skittering across the marble floor as he hopped about on one foot, trying to regain his balance. When he had, he looked down at what had tripped him.

  Twin ruby eyes winked up at him from out a silver wolf’s head.

  His father’s sword.

  Andri stared at the silver blade, confused. What was Alestair’s sword doing on the landing? The pyromancer never went anywhere without it. And then he realized he had kicked the sword into the middle of a crimson pool.

  Blood.

  Red smears led from one end of the pool down the hallway. Lured on by a dread curiosity, Andri bent down to pick up his father’s sword as he skirted the scarlet puddle and followed the grisly trail.

  It led to the body of a serving girl, only a few years younger than Andri. She was responsible for making sure the tenants on this floor had fresh linens. For some reason, Andri could not remember her name.

  She lay on her back, glassy blue eyes staring up at the ceiling. Her throat had been torn out, so savagely that he could see the bones of her spine.

  The thick smell of blood and the sight of her glistening tendons and exposed muscle made Andri’s stomach churn. He turned his head and vomited, hot bile burning his mouth and nose.

  When he could breathe again, he moved over to the girl’s body and bent to close her eyes, murmuring a prayer for her soul. As he touched her skin, he realized she was still warm.

  That meant the killer could still be nearby, on this floor.

  He knew he should go find the guards and raise the alarm, but if whoever had done this was still here, then people—his parents—were in danger.

  Is that why his father’s sword had been lying discarded on the floor? Had the pyromancer faced the killer? Had he been overpowered and forced to flee? Or had Alestair stumbled across the girl’s body himself and realized that Andri’s mother could be next?

  No, Andri couldn’t wait. He had to find his parents. Now.

  Bloody footprints led from the serving girl’s body down the hall. Though the tracks were smudged and indistinct, Andri thought he could make out what looked like claws.

  He wasn’t looking for a human, then. For some reason, that made him feel better.

  Hurrying down the corridor, he followed the crimson trail past several closed doors, until he found an open one. Another body lay just inside the doorway—a man who, like the girl, had had his throat torn out. He’d probably been on his way to Mass, if the prayer books scattered on the floor were any indication, though the service didn’t start for another quarter bell. The man’s piety had likely gotten him killed.

  Andri didn’t bother to stop, merely mumbled a quick prayer for the man as he picked up his pace until he was almost jogging. The closer he got to his parents’ quarters, the more his fear grew.

  He rounded a corner and almost tripped over a third body, but he didn’t even pause to look to see if this victim was male or female. His parents lived at the end of this hall.

  And their door was open.

  Andri resisted the urge to call out. If the killer was in there, he wanted to take him—no, it—by surprise. He paused at the doorway to wipe sweaty palms on his pants and make the sign of the Flame. Then, with a wordless prayer, he entered his parents’ apartments, cautiously stepping over the threshold.

  The foyer and living room were empty, with everything in its proper place and no sign of any struggle. The tell-tale red prints led across the rich Aerenal rug towards the bedrooms and his father’s study. As Andri followed, he could only think how angry his mother was going to be when she saw the mess—the rug had been a wedding present from her childhood friend, Lavira Tagor, who was now the Keeper of the Silver Flame. He remembered the one time he had tracked mud across the fine weave—his mother had threatened to take him to the Keeper, to make him explain to the head of the Church why he had so little respect for her incredibly generous gift. Andri, who even then had known he was called to serve the Flame, had begged his mother not reveal his sin to the Keeper, and spent three nights on his hands and knees scrubbing the stains out of the rug himself. He’d never set foot on it again, and even now he skirted the edge as he trailed the killer.

  The tracks bypassed his father’s study, and Andri felt the fear he had been fighting back take an iron hold on his heart as he realized where the killer was headed. His mother’s rooms.

  Chardice Aeyliros was a powerful priestess of the Flame, and normally Andri would have confidence in her ability to hold her own against any would-be murderer, but she had been ill for some time now, and neither the Jorasco healers nor her fellow clerics had been able to determine why. She spent most of her time in bed, rising only to attend evening Mass, walking slowly and leaning heavily on her husband’s arm, or Andri’s when he was free from his studies. She was in no condition to fend off a chattering maid, let alone a feral creature that had already left three corpses in its wake.

  The door to his mother’s rooms was ajar, and Andri pushed it open slowly, tightening his grip on the hilt of his father’s sword. The sitting room was empty, but a fire burned low in the hearth, destroying Andri’s one hope that his mother might somehow not be home.

  He heard a sound from her bedroom—not a scream. His mother was too well-trained for that. More like an exclamation of surprise.

  The need for stealth had passed. There was no other exit from his mother’s rooms. He had her assailant trapped.

  Andri rushed across the sitting room and into his mother’s bedroom, w
here a nightmare awaited him.

  His mother lay disheveled on her bed in a long, silvery nightgown, her heavy brocaded quilts tossed haphazardly on the floor. Leaning over her in some obscene parody of intimacy was a creature covered in dark blood-spattered fur, bushy tail wagging like a dog’s, its long canine snout hovering mere inches from his mother’s open mouth.

  For a split second, Andri thought it was a shifter—her friend, Renato? But wasn’t he in the Reaches, visiting family?

  Then, as the pale lavender light from Dravago’s newly-full face streamed in through the window, Andri realized the awful truth.

  The thing bending over his mother, looking for all the world as if it wanted simply to lick her face like a happy puppy, was not one of the weretouched.

  It was one of the moontouched.

  A werewolf.

  A startled gasp escaped him, and the werewolf and his mother turned their heads to look at him. The lycanthrope’s tongue lolled out, and it seemed to smile. Then it turned back to his mother and, head darting forward with blinding speed, locked its powerful jaws around her throat and began to tear.

  Chardice’s eyes never left those of her son. Her gaze captivated him, held him rooted to the spot, even as the werewolf tore bloody chunks of flesh from her neck.

  The priestess did not look horrified, or even frightened, just … sad. Resigned. And perhaps even … expectant?

  Andri shook off his trance with an inarticulate cry and threw himself across the room, certain even as he did so that he was too late. His brief moment of inaction had cost his mother her life.

  The werewolf turned at the last instant, just as Andri reached the bedside and was preparing to bring his father’s blade down in a powerful arc. With a nonchalance bordering on arrogance, the creature stepped past his guard and backhanded him across the face so hard that Andri felt his jawbone break. The force of the blow sent Andri stumbling backward. His feet tangled in his mother’s cast-off blankets, and he went down.