the ogre boy dwarfed Yeves so that he seemed the size of a normal domesticated dog. Trickster relished the thought of the boy kicking Yeves or dragging him on a leash.
“I have to live through this race,” he whispered to Nath. “This tale can’t be allowed to die with me!”
“We will now review the rules of the race,” the bobcat declared. This, too, was part of the ritual before all official contests held by the gods.
“This Trickster astride the god steed Nath shall race Yeves on the course already determined.” The cat paused and primly licked her paw. “Should Trickster win…”
“Yeves will permit me as much treasure from his hoard as I can carry,” Trickster finished, just as Elbadu had advised him.
“And should Yeves win…”
“I will claim the life of Trickster, his steed, and that of my realm’s former guardian.”
“It is stated.” The bobcat gazed all around her with wild green eyes. Trickster thought of Yioka’s seer in the throes of a trance. “Although you cannot see them, the gods have surrounded us with their presence.”
And Trickster closed his eyes. Sure enough, the air above Yeves’s keep was abuzz with strangely mingled human and animal voices.
“Most of the pantheon shall behold your intentions, and mine and Ojier’s regarding this race. They will also see whether you uphold them in losing. A god’s word is his power, but it also is his bond. Thus, it cannot be broken without forfeiting all that he is, powers and realm.”
Trickster listened raptly, but Yeves paced with occasional stops in which he would gaze at the bobcat as if hinting that she should hurry.
“For my part, I will announce the race’s start. At the end, my son will declare the victor. Go on, Ojier.”
The ogre boy proceeded to the edge of the cliff but did not fall as Yeves and Trickster soon would. Instead, he simply vanished.
“Prepare yourselves, contenders.” The bobcat raised her fur and gave a mighty scream.
Nath shot forth as though a tornado pushed him from behind. Trickster laughed wildly, then looked to the left. Despite Nath’s incredible start, Yeves had matched their pace. It would be a close contest, so close that none in the mortal realm would ever equal it.
For the fall into the canyon Nath easily kept pace with the lightning wolf. The fog closed in, and just before they plunged into the lake, Nath was skimming the top, spraying water at the bank. The bridge loomed ahead. As they approached, Trickster gripped the talisman Elbadu had given him.
“Nath has watched many of Yeves’s other races,” the giant tortoise said. “Yeves always summons that surge against his opponents at the bridge. It only defeats the most unaware and defenseless.”
Before Trickster could feel too offended at Elbadu’s statement, Nath cleared the bridge in a stomach-churning ascent. Below, the surge flashed white fire. Before Trickster’s sight returned, Elbadu ordered Trickster to have Nath descend, preventing them from losing any ground. Now they crashed through the forest. Trickster marveled at Nath’s agility in avoiding the profuse trees and their branches, despite his one eye.
“Be ready for the break in the trees,” Elbadu warned. “That is where Yeves will show you his full strength. Nath has rehearsed this part of the race longer than you have been alive.”
“Is this where you were beaten?” Trickster asked, but no answer came from the talisman.
For many strides, the trees flickered past. Wolf eyes stared, and Yeves flaunted his power with sizzling lightning.
Then the trees gave way to a dismal plain dotted with raw, blasted trunks. Trickster gave the reins as much slack as he dared. “I leave it to you, Nath,” he whispered.
They drew up alongside Yeves who wove his enchantment as he ran. A menacing bark leaped from his mouth and bounded skyward. Legions of clouds gathered at his command and flung their water spears. Darkness engulfed land and sky, and in it, Yeves’s fur took its proper form: leaping blades of electricity in fiery blue. The heavens shuddered and shot mirror wolves of Yeves to the ground; violet, gold, red wolves fanned out beside the god, snarling and snapping. Their screams filled Trickster’s head. The gambler only hoped that in spite of these horrors, Nath’s single eye was fixed on the finish line.
Every whoosh of Nath’s wings matched Yeves’s mighty stride. Dumbfounded, Trickster marveled at the vastness of the course. Perhaps they raced to the ends of the earth, and that was how all the tribes under the sky knew the tales of lightning.
“The field of purple…the end…” Elbadu said through the talisman.
Trickster raised one hand to shield his eyes and nearly lost his seat. He had just settled for squinting through the driving rain when he heard Elbadu’s voice again. “Be ready to grab the victor’s rose.”
“Victor’s rose?”
““There is one white rose in all the purple cineraria. To show you won the race, you must have it in your hands.”
“I understand.” With eyes trained to swiftness from gambling, Trickster scanned the meadow ahead for white flowers but saw nothing but a solid wall of purple. A snarl beside him jolted his concentration. Yeves knew where the flower was, Trickster realized in dismay. He would have no need to slow down to look for it.
Certain of their victory, the wolves howled as one. Lightning fried the air. And in the light, Trickster saw it, a fragile white rose bud in a sea of cineraria.
He reached out to grab it. In one miraculous instant, it seemed that Yeves slackened his stride. Then Trickster heard the crackling clouds above him. He stared, dazzled, up a white passage, then found himself on the ground, dirt and blood mingled in his mouth.
“Nath …” The whisper filled Trickster’s mouth with a metallic taste. Smoke poured off the snake’s flank. The meat within was red and raw. Each second, he lost altitude as his body thrashed in pain.
With clenched fists, Trickster limped toward the victor’s rose. He would never make it in time! Unless…!
“Elbadu,” he whispered, hoping the talisman still had its power. “Tell Nath to crash into the finish line and uproot as many flowers as he can!”
“If he does that, you’ll never get the victor’s rose!”
“You must trust me!”
For several agonizing instants, Trickster feared that Elbadu would not heed him. Then Nath darted for the cineraria. The force of his flight sent dirt and flowers skyward to join the stormy chaos. Nath completed his crash with a roll that buried the single rose in bruised purple petals, stems, leaves, and dirt.
Yeves skidded to a halt. “You!” he roared. Lightning raged his wrath above; wind and rain lashed all below. “Pawn of Elbadu! This was his idea, wasn’t it?” he demanded, pacing through the mutilated flowers.
Trickster met the god’s unblinking gaze though doing so filled him with the desire to cower on the ground and wait, whimpering, for death.
“I will turn that tortoise over and let him starve for an eternity!” The wolf’s minions flickered out one after another, leaving the meadow in near darkness. “Perhaps it was crushed in the chaos,” Yeves mused, his luminous eyes slitted in concentration.
Something large and dark loomed at the meadow’s edge, then drew toward them. Trickster started, then remembered Ojier, who the bobcat had sent ahead. With dull eyes, the ogre silently watched Yeves pawing through flowers and dirt, making no move to help.
Trickster put his hands inside his coat. Instead of the jagged hardness of bones, he felt sharp thorns and soft petals. “Now here’s a throw I imagine even Knucklebones never made. May it make his legacy proud,” he murmured. “I shall never admit to Deft Hands that I have actually profited from someone’s tantrum at the end of a game.”
“What did you say?” Yeves demanded, rounding on him.
“Nothing, nothing. Have you found the flower yet?”
Thunder growled Yeves’s answer. He turned his back on Trickster and began digging.
�
�Oh dear!” It was the bobcat’s voice. “Nothing like this has ever happened before!”
When Yeves had completed his first pile of dirt, Trickster again closed his hand around the once bone, now rose.
“Why, here it is,” he said. As he uttered the lie, Trickster remembered the gods watching.
“What?” Lightning flashed in Yeves’s eyes.
“Don’t damage it,” Trickster said in as patronizing a voice as he dared. He had to keep Yeves from getting a close look. He hoped the wolf was too tired from racing and searching to consider that a mere mortal had dared to cheat him.
“This can’t be,” Yeves whispered. His eyes narrowed and widened, just as the Yioka gamblers’ did when they suspected a bluff but did not dare to call it.
“I can understand Nath’s desire for vengeance giving him an edge,” the bobcat said. “But with a mortal rider?”
A thrill shot through Trickster. He had never thought that gods’ reactions would so resemble those of humans. Old Knucklebones had always said that gambling involved at least three concurrent games: the one you played with hands and physical objects and a more subtle one of reading your opponent’s body language. The third, and most difficult of all, was governing your own reactions, which was just what Trickster did now.
“Why Yeves, don’t you believe that this is the victor’s rose? Well, I can see why you don’t. If I were as mighty as you, with such a long-standing record against so many esteemed opponents, I, too, would not be
Trickster Races the Lightning Wolf Page 4