Frost Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  “What?” Now it was Gwynneth who staggered and felt faint.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DANCE INTERRUPTED

  THE SNOWBANKS AND DRIVING winds slowed the journey toward the cairns. Though they had appeared so close, it took a day and most of a night to reach them. The five wolves had drawn up just beneath the looming blue shadow of the icy battlements of the Blood Watch, near the source of the whispers they were tracking. Very few of the cairns were topped.

  “Great Lupus!” Edme murmured, squinting toward the ridge. “How do they keep watch? There are at least thirty cairns, and only four or five wolves up there.”

  “Maybe at this distance and in this light, we can’t see them all. When we get closer, there might be more wolves,” the Whistler offered.

  “Let’s hope,” Faolan said, although there was not a trace of hope in his voice.

  “I wonder if the Prophet will be there?” Dearlea asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ve seen so many circles between the Shadow Forest and here that it’s hard to imagine he could be in so many places at once,” Faolan said. “And I would hope if he were, the Blood Watch would stop him — her — whatever. Stop the dancing.”

  “I think it spreads,” Edme said. “It’s like a disease, this dance. Maybe this prophet started it, but he can’t be there for everybody.” She paused. “Not like Skaarsgard.” She looked up at the sky. It was too cloudy to see any constellations. “I bet you anything this so-called prophet is just an ordinary wolf.”

  “An ordinary, starving wolf,” Mhairie added, “whose brain has become addled from starvation and his marrow thinned. He might not even be a bad wolf. Just a stupid wolf with some idiot idea.”

  Edme lifted her muzzle into the breeze. “The wind is coming our way. I think we’ve found a dance circle!”

  “I am already picking up the stench of the outclanners.” Mhairie wrinkled her nose.

  “Yes, the wind favors us, so they might not pick up our scent. And that fox den gave us a good cover scent if the wind should shift. Let’s see what we have. But we’re just going to watch, and not engage.” Faolan said the last word with emphasis.

  They made their way as close as they could to the source of the whispers. As they crested a small rise, they spotted a broad circle with several wolves dancing.

  “Look!” Edme said.

  “Are they really moving? It seems so slow,” Dearlea whispered.

  “One is falling down,” Faolan said.

  They had no idea how long the wolves had been dancing, but they seemed to be in a deep trance. They moved unthinkingly through the steps as if almost asleep. It was the oddest thing any of the five travelers had ever seen. The dancing wolves were twirling slowly, their steps somehow freakish. In the wasting light of the moon, under a sky reeling with stars, these creatures looked as if they had lost their essence, their defining marrow. They had the bodies of wolves, but inside, it was as if a different animal inhabited their pelts. Their movements were palsied, involuntary jerks and twitches. While dancing they emitted strange wheezes and gurgles so dissimilar to a wolf’s normal vocal range that they were incomprehensible.

  Edme wondered aloud, “Lord Adair and Lord Jarne were bad, but would they go this far?”

  “Hush, let’s listen,” Faolan ordered. “They’ve left off those other sounds they were making. They’re starting to howl.”

  The howling began with a warbling ululation similar to the glaffling or mourning cry of grieving wolves. At first the words were incoherent, but soon the travelers could make them out.

  Kill … kill … kill the body. Release the soul

  We are waiting souls wrapped in our sacred pelts

  Skaarsgard, your apostles await you

  Gather us to your star fur

  Let our marrow join yours

  Bring the Cave of Souls to earth

  Where we will live again

  Death is our life

  Dying our meat

  Our spirits will feast.

  The morbid howling festered in the night air, and yet there was something seductive in the sound. Despite the deep weirdness of the dancers, the five wolves felt a sudden vulnerability stir within their marrow. They knew they must stand strong together. Faolan put a paw on Mhairie’s shoulder, and Edme raised her paw and placed it on Dearlea’s withers, while the Whistler nuzzled his head protectively on top of Edme’s. There was something insidious in the darkness. Insidious and yet enthralling.

  So easy, so easy, Faolan was thinking. So easy to give in. Will I fall in love with death when it finally comes? Does a starving wolf fall in love with famine?

  Some of the dancers, nearing the cusp of exhaustion, collapsed on the ground unconscious.

  Dearlea blinked as a caribou pelt fell off of one of the wolves in the dance circle.

  “Mum!” she yelped. “It’s Mum!”

  And it was Caila — Caila, the once proud turning guard of the MacDuncan clan. She stood still as the remaining wolves continued to dance around her. Her eyes were clouded and reflected nothing in the darkness of the night. But there was no stopping Dearlea and Mhairie. They raced down the embankment toward their mother. To Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler, the she-wolf they had known as Caila was barely recognizable. Her unfocused eyes seemed to spin in her head as madly as the Sark’s. Her once lustrous blond pelt had turned dull and brownish. In many places there were bald patches with old blood and dark yellows and browns that came from tree bark smeared on her bare skin. As the moon rolled out from behind the clouds, the shadows of the dancing wolves leaped around her, and it seemed as if she were ensnared in a macabre web.

  “Mother!” Mhairie skidded to a stop in front of Caila. “It’s us. Your pups. Me — Mhairie — and Dearlea.”

  “Oh, Mum!” Dearlea cried.

  Caila blinked and for just a second the sisters caught a glimpse of a familiar bright glint in her eyes. There was a glimmer of tenderness, and then the eyes turned dark and the light died.

  Caila peeled back her lips and growled. It was a strange gesture, half threat and half fear. Her ears did not fold back but twitched as if caught in a spasm. “I am not your mum. I have never been your mum. Never! Never!”

  “No, Mum!” Mhairie cried and shook her head. “We’re your daughters!” Mhairie pleaded while Dearlea simply looked on, stunned beyond words.

  “No! No! I was your wet nurse. No more.” Caila staggered slightly and her eyes came into focus. “You two were the right ones in the litter of three. The third was a malcadh. And you know the laws.” She had lapsed into a singsong voice. Her tone was almost silly but had an edge of mockery. “Your true Milk Giver was driven from the clan and you two were left with me.”

  “You can’t say that!” Mhairie cried.

  “She’s mad!” Dearlea gasped.

  “I can and I do say it. Eiric was never your father. I was never your mother. I deny you! I deny you! I deny you!”

  To deny three times was the curse of the faithful mate to an unfaithful partner. But it was never uttered to children. Never!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE CAVE BEFORE TIME

  “WE’RE YOUR DAUGHTERS,” DEARLEA pleaded for the third time. And just as Caila was about to respond, an outclanner came out of nowhere and lunged for a wolf that had collapsed on the ground in a stupor. The outclanner misjudged his leap and landed on Caila. There was a terrible shriek as his fangs sunk into her flanks. Faolan and Edme both leaped on the attacking wolf and rolled him, but he was quick and strong for such a thin creature, and he reeked of dead wolf. Within seconds Faolan realized that the outclanner stalked the dancing circles and devoured the wolves who had dropped from exhaustion. He was a wolf eater.

  Faolan had never experienced outrage as strong as what coursed through him. It felt as if his marrow were on fire. The wolf eater wheeled about to confront him, and Edme watched, transfixed, as Faolan reared on his hind legs. He tossed his head at an odd angle. His green eyes darkened to black and the tip
s of his guard hairs turned bright white. Suddenly, it seemed to Edme that Faolan had ceased being a wolf. It was as if he had slipped his pelt to become something else, another animal, immense and frightening. He growled. It was not a wolf’s growl at all but came from deeper in his chest with a rough, raw resonance that shook the air. Faolan struck out at the wolf with both his paws. The splayed one looked immense and the sound of it connecting with the wolf eater sent a crack around the circle. A second later the wolf’s head lopped sideways and dangled ridiculously, and then he collapsed on the ground. It was over.

  The four wolves stood in stunned silence. But the other wolves were oblivious and kept dancing, except for Caila, who turned in a daze and began walking away. Snow had begun to fall, and within seconds she dissolved into the whiteness of the night.

  Edme turned to the Whistler. “Did you see him?”

  “You mean what Faolan did to the wolf — breaking his neck?”

  “But … but was it really Faolan?”

  “What are you talking about?” the Whistler asked.

  He didn’t see it! Edme couldn’t believe it. Surely the Whistler must have seen Faolan’s transformation, heard the growl, seen the white guard hairs, or even the peculiar way in which Faolan’s narrow muzzle had suddenly broadened, so his nose squashed upward and his nostrils flared. It was the face and the pelt of a grizzly. And did Faolan tear with his fangs as a wolf should? No, he had merely smacked the wolf eater with a mighty blow and instantly snapped his neck. Was she, Edme, the only one who had seen all this?

  The outclanner lay dead in the snow, which was now coming down so hard that his body was quickly being covered. The dancing of the other wolves slowed in the thickly falling flakes. The wind suddenly strengthened and slammed into them. The world was turning an impenetrable white.

  “We have to get Mhairie and Dearlea out of here,” Faolan said. “Look at them.” The two sisters were clinging to each other and trembling as they stared into the whiteness that had swallowed their mother.

  “We can’t leave her!” Dearlea cried. “She’s hurt, bleeding.”

  “We can follow her blood trail,” Mhairie said.

  “No! Not against this wind. The snow is getting worse, it’s going to be a blizzard,” Edme barked. “We have to find shelter. We’ll be smothered by it if we don’t find a cave, a den. Anything!”

  “What about them?” Mhairie said, looking at the Skaars wolves. Only three were dancing now. The rest had collapsed and were quickly becoming mounds in the snow.

  “They’ll be dead by morning.” Faolan’s voice was flat. “And so will we if we don’t find shelter.”

  The night had become a featureless world of swirling white. So it was not what Faolan saw but what he heard that alerted him. He shoved his ears forward. The sound of the wind was screeching around them, high and whistling, but beneath the whistle was another sound, a lower warble as if the contours of the landscape around them had shifted. A yawn in the wind made Faolan shut his eyes. Could it be? Could they be that near? Was that gasp in the wind truly … “Follow me!” he ordered.

  The rhythmic breathing of five exhausted wolves echoed off the walls of the cave to wrap around Edme. It’s a cocoon of dreams, she thought. She fervently wished that the sleep of Mhairie and Dearlea was dreamless — void of any memories of their mother. The Whistler — did he dream? In the brief time he had been with them he had regained his strength, though he was still stick thin.

  And Faolan, what were his dreams? Edme wondered. She looked over at her sleeping friend. His muzzle was long and narrow, like that of a wolf. His nostrils were no longer flared, and the tips of his guard hairs were the same color as the rest of his fur — silver, not white. She remembered how half a moon or more back, he had come into their den on the scouting expedition, shimmering with frost, huge, but so fragile, like a creature from another time. Like a frost wolf. “Another time,” she whispered to herself and looked around the cave.

  This cave was a strange place and also felt as if it existed in another time. Almost another world, thought Edme. How had Faolan found it? The light inside was dim, but she opened her single eye wide and felt something else open inside her. There was a sudden illumination, as if a piece of moonlight had fallen into the cave. She looked about, and in the flickering silvery light, she saw the forms of all manner of animals leaping, running, and flying. There seemed to be a byrrgis of wolves streaking across the rock surface of the cave. The flat lines drawn on the rock wall suggested motion and hinted at a story — a very old story.

  For Faolan sleeping beside her, those drawings pulsed with life. While Edme heard the rhythmic breathing of her sleeping companions, Faolan heard the breath of the scores of animals running across the rock face. He heard the pounding of caribou hooves, the nearly silent stirrings of the owls’ wings as they flew above the byrrgis. In his sleep, he heard and felt them all.

  As Faolan slept, he felt something flow out of his marrow to another self. This is not a dream, he thought. This is real. A very real part of himself exited his sleeping body and hovered above him for a few brief seconds. It drifted almost lazily through a maze of passageways in the cave. Ah, yes, he thought, as he encountered a blank wall with no drawings. He picked up a fragment of black rock in his mouth and began to scratch on the wall. A new picture. Time for a new picture. The thought did not seem odd to him in the least. Had he done this before in the gyre of time?

  His paw felt unusually nimble, but he did not question anything. He simply knew that it was crucial that he record the terrible sight of the Skaars dancers and the savage outclanner who had come to feed on the unconscious wolves. Faolan had killed him with one swift blow to the head. But it was not the wolf spirit within him that killed the outclanner. It was the spirit of another animal, a bear. Faolan looked down to see he was not holding the rock fragment in his teeth, but in his paw. But his paw had changed; it was now the same paw that had delivered that fatal blow — a bear’s paw. How interesting, he observed in a detached manner.

  And then he was once more hovering over his sleeping body. What had been divided began to come together again, a knitting of marrows as one spirit flowed back into another. The sleeping body stirred ever so slightly. Just before Faolan drifted back into consciousness, Caila’s words streamed through his mind. You two were the right ones in the litter of three. The third was a malcadh. And you know the laws.

  And I was the third, Faolan thought. I was the malcadh. In the year of his birth, only one malcadh had been born into the MacDuncan clan. And it had been he. Mhairie and Dearlea were his sisters.

  Faolan woke with a start and rose to his feet. He knew two things now — one truth from his dream journey through the cave, and one that he had felt ever since he had noticed the golden flecks in Mhairie’s and Dearlea’s eyes. He had seen that shimmering gold before — behind the milky film in the eyes of Morag, his first Milk Giver.

  The young she-wolves were waking now. Faolan walked over to them.

  “What is it, Faolan?” Dearlea asked. He tipped his head to one side and peered deeply into their eyes.

  “You had a mother before Caila. Our mother — Morag. I am the malcadh who was cast out, and you were the two pups who were saved. Dearlea, Mhairie, you are my sisters. She would have loved you dearly — your first Milk Giver.”

  “What?” the sisters gasped.

  “Faolan, you mean she was driven from the clan because of you? And we — Mhairie and I — were given to Caila — a second Milk Giver?”

  “Yes. That is the law for the sisters of a malcadh,” Faolan replied. “And Caila loved you. She did. You must believe that.”

  The sisters’ eyes swam with confusion.

  “She was sick when she denied you. She is sick. Can’t you see it?”

  They both stared at him silently. He could not read their expressions. Did it mean nothing to them that they now had a brother? Or were they perhaps ashamed? Did they blame him for their real mother being driven from the cla
n?

  And I have another secret, Faolan thought. Before I was born a wolf, I had a thunderous heart in my chest. The heart of a grizzly bear. But this truth, Faolan would tell no one.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A SUDDEN SUMMER

  “WELL, TOO BAD THE BLIZZARD slammed down on us. But it has eased now. So we might as well start here.” The Sark plunged into a mountainous drift.

  “You can’t be serious, ma’am!” Gwynneth found herself addressing the scrawny butt of the Sark, who seemed to have been swallowed almost whole by the snowdrift.

  The Sark surfaced a few seconds later in a soft explosion of powdery white.

  “You were saying?” she asked.

  “I was saying you can’t seriously be trying to find scent traces in all this!”

  “One has to begin someplace,” the Sark replied tersely.

  “Can you smell anything?”

  “There are traces down there, but it’s difficult. I’m going to do a little digging now that I’ve at least made something of a dent. So far, the spoor is pointing us north and west.”

  “Toward the Outermost?” Gwynneth’s voice quavered, but the Sark was so absorbed in her task of digging out the drift that she didn’t notice. Gwynneth couldn’t help but admire her tenacity.

  “Oh, if there were only a Burrowing Owl around! They can dig with those long legs of theirs. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, ma’am.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Your talents will be used.”

  It was not the first time the Sark and the Masked Owl had worked together. As the Sark often reminded Gwynneth, the two of them together were more than the sum of their parts. As the Sark put it, “With my sniffer and your ear slits, we’ve got it all.”

  The Sark might not believe in scrooms, but she did believe in honor and duty. And it was Gwynneth’s duty to find her father’s helmet and visor and to try to restore his hero mark as best she could. Gwynneth could not be absolutely certain where this grave was, but if she could find his helmet, she knew in her gizzard that she would somehow be guided there. I know it! I just know it! But she was startled at the idea that her father’s bones might rest in the Outermost.