Following a day of practice in which she did not look at or speak
to any of the other girls – and they had returned the same cold
courtesy – Aritchaka came to her as she was bedding down.
‘Do not sleep. Tonight I will come for you,’ the priestess
instructed. She was staring, weighing what she saw, but her face
could not be read.
‘What is it?’ Maniye wanted Hesprec there, because she
dearly needed anyone who might be on her side. Although he
was tolerated within the Shining Halls, his presence in the
temple itself was very much on sufferance. He could not stay
there long. She was alone.
‘The Queen has sent for you,’ Aritchaka told her. ‘Tonight we
feast with the Tiger. It is for the priesthood and the great families – but she will have you there.’ She was unhappy about it.
Maniye felt her own innards clench. What did this mean? Was
Joalpey going to acknowledge her at last? Would the priesthood
stand for it, if she did? Or was she herself to be offered to the
Tiger? Would it be her screams next, now the extended torment
of the Swift Back scout had finally been silenced.
After that, there was nothing for it but to watch the moon
climb the sky and put the stars to shame, to name the constellations as they made their procession above, and wonder if any of
them might be invoked to come to her aid. Within her, her twin
souls roiled in a festering sore of fight and flight, keyed up to a
danger that she could not assess or confront. The foot-dragging
stretch between dusk and midnight was a long and lonely road
for her.
And then at last she heard the soft scuff of Aritchaka’s return.
The priestess carried with her a robe of soft hide and a cloak of
tiger fur, which lay heavy enough on Maniye’s shoulders that
she felt the Tiger himself was pressing down on her. Meekly,
mutely, she followed in the woman’s footsteps into the heart of
the temple, into that same room of smoke and shadow where the
insubstantial spectre of the Tiger dwelt.
She had expected there might be other students – those in
favour or disfavour – or perhaps the priesthood all mantled in
tiger-skin, but Aritchaka backed out again as soon as she had
delivered Maniye there, and then it was just the two of them: the
girl with the Wolf tribe face and the Queen of the Tiger people.
Joalpey, whose secret name was Strength Under Moonlight,
forced her head around to gaze directly at her daughter. The
muscles of her jaw clenched, but this time she did not look away.
Her eyes just lanced and lanced deeper, as though Maniye was
a boil.
She knows
. Just one lapse into wolf shape, after resisting it for
so long . . . but of course word had come to her mother.
Is this
to be a reckoning then?
Maniye felt the Tiger cease his pacing and
settle down in the darkness behind her, head resting on his
paws, and watching. Something was to happen here: her twin
souls knew it. She could almost hear the great cat’s rumbling
purr of anticipation, feeling it like a tremor in the ground.
Then there were servants: thralls, men with heavy collars
bearing platters of meat. They looked at neither woman, merely
trod about the chamber in fixed paths, eyes on their feet as if
terrified of stepping astray.
‘Sit with me,’ Joalpey instructed. ‘Maniye . . . Many Tracks
. . . daughter, sit with me.’
She folded herself down alongside the altar and, after a
moment, Maniye followed her example.
‘Aritchaka and the priesthood hold the Tiger’s feast, but the
Queen takes her meat apart from her subjects,’ Joalpey
explained. She was watching Maniye as if the girl was venomous, or apt to become violently mad. ‘But you shall eat with me.
Please . . .’
Maniye took a sliver of meat: it was so tender that it seemed
to melt on her tongue, delicately spiced and rich with juices. She
was suddenly aware of how hungry she was, having fasted since
noon. Joalpey found a smile and forced it onto her face, picking
at the flesh herself.
‘They tell me you learn fast, devouring all they have to teach
you,’ she observed.
‘I want to be of the Tiger,’ Maniye insisted. ‘I will do anything, if it means that.’
Joalpey regarded her doubtfully as the girl scooped up
another slice of meat and tore into it. ‘In this short time, you
have made great advances, they say. You cannot walk the steps
of the Tiger’s dance, yet each footfall is not so very far away.
You do not know all the cycles of our heroes and our deeds, yet
you can tell a tale that is not so very far removed. And they say
you Step well.’ Her voice had gone hard on that word, but
Maniye could see that she was fighting down the bitter edge in
it.
Maniye opened her mouth again, not sure what she should
say next. She longed for Hesprec’s wisdom, to know what convoluted sequence of words would break down the barrier still
between them. Surely there had to be some magic that could
accomplish it.
‘The Tiger’s sacred meal,’ Joalpey gestured. ‘How do you like
it?’
‘Very well,’ Maniye said, desperate to please, although it was
true.
‘You understand, then?’
The girl frowned. ‘Understand?’
‘That you eat the flesh of the Wolf.’
That was no great revelation: amongst the Winter Runners
she had eaten wolf-meat many times. It was common, when a
hearth-woman wished to become with child, that she would
have her hunter mate kill a wolf and butcher its body for the pot.
In that way the beast’s soul would be cut loose, and might seek
out a new life within her belly. Usually there was enough to
spare, and it was good practice to woo the Wolf’s favour by gifting it to many. Still, the meat was tough and poor eating, not like
the feast currently before her.
‘This tastes like no wolf,’ she remarked, around a mouthful,
‘This is tender as pig.’
Joalpey regarded her intently. ‘It is Wolf,’ and this time Maniye
caught the special inflection, and a sudden shudder of fright
went through her.
With great willpower she forced the mouthful down, aware of
sitting suddenly on a knife-edge. Yes, the Swift Back scout had
stopped screaming at last. She had not asked what would be
done with him after that.
‘But, if he died . . .’ The words were drawn out of her as
though she had eaten a keen-edged thread along with the meat,
and now it was being hauled back out. Humans were animals,
animals were human. There was no line between them save the
ability to Step. Souls passed one to the other. To eat of a deer
that had worn a man’s shape was no different than to eat of a
mute deer that had not.
But Joalpey meant something different.
‘His ghost . . .’ Maniye got out, ‘is here?’
‘Yes,’ the Queen confirmed calmly, and selected another
morsel herself.
Maniye sat very still. Because this was a Tiger thing; this was
a tradition of her mother’s house. This was
how they did things
in
the Shining Halls. But it was wrong, it was terribly wrong. Not
eating the flesh of a man, for all beasts were men, but to eat his
soul. To trap it within the yoked human flesh and to consume it
– to give a mad ghost sanctuary inside your own body – was to
fill yourself too full of souls – and she had two already fighting
within her.
‘This is how the Tiger is fed. He is a god. What do you think
he eats? Other people do not understand this, but
we
know.’
And Maniye thought,
The Shadow Eaters, the Wolves call us. It
is not just a casual name.
Her hands shook. She thought that she could feel the dead
Wolf’s ghost squirming inside her. And yet . . . and yet the Tiger
had padded up behind her, darkening the gloom further with its
smoky presence, waiting to be fed.
There were rituals that they had tried to teach her, words and
forms and steps. Aware that Joalpey’s eyes were fixed upon her
fiercely, Maniye stood, trying to master the hammering of her
heart. She took a deep breath – and turned to face the god.
Her eyes saw only the dancing patterns of shadow that the
fires threw against the wall, but her mind told her that these were
the striped flanks of the Tiger, that the hot air was his breath.
The knowledge, the utter
certainty
that he was immediately
before her came like a blow, as though that sightless muzzle had
suddenly nudged at her chest, rocking her back on her heels.
She could not remember all the moves, the gestures of invitation and propitiation, but she could guess and follow her
instincts, just as Joalpey had said. The sequence was not long,
and if she did not get every motion of it exactly right, she was
never far away – hovering about it like a crow over a dying
thing. With a mix of grace and awkward pauses she invited the
Tiger to feed, to take the struggling soul of the Swift Back scout
from between her lips.
As she imagined that vast maw gaping for her, she wondered
what else it might take from her. She felt her own Wolf nature
backing as far into her as it could go, tail between its legs, yellow
eyes glinting.
When she turned back, with the dark tide that was the Tiger
receding in her mind, Joalpey was standing there – close enough
to touch. She was still staring – forcing herself to stare at the
girl. One hand was raised halfway, as if to rest on Maniye’s arm,
but it had paused. For a moment – for a long, tense agony of a
moment – she remained still, save that Maniye could hear her
mother’s ragged breathing.
‘I want a daughter,’ the Queen got out. ‘I want an heir of my
own blood. You are all the heirs of my blood, all that there will
ever be . . .’ The outstretched hand twitched, contracting into a
fist. ‘But . . . but . . . but I look on you and see it in your eyes, in
your face. You have a wolf soul.’
‘I have a tiger soul.’ Maniye’s voice was just a whisper.
‘It is not enough,’ Joalpey forced out through clenched teeth.
‘Aritchaka has told you—’
‘Aritchaka,’ Joalpey hissed. ‘Aritchaka has spoken for you.You
are strong, she says.You are clever.You are brave.You are all the
things a child of the Tiger should be. But I see these things in
you, too, and it is a Wolf’s strength, a Wolf’s cleverness. I cannot
change my eyes. I cannot forget them: Stone River and that
loathsome creature his priest. And you
are
them. They sit in
your face, and I cannot see you past them.’ She took two steps
away, convulsively. The hand that had been reaching out was
now warding.
Maniye tried to voice something: a plea, a protest. What
sound came out did not make a complete word.
‘And they will use you against me,’ her mother whispered.
‘The Tiger tells me so. The Tiger tells me that you must be prey,
if you are not his. What am I to do? I want to make you mine,
but I cannot. I cannot bear you to be here. I thought I could face
it, after all this time, but it still cuts me – it hurts just as it did.’
She turned away, fists clenched by her sides, shaking.
Maniye felt the Tiger’s breath still on her neck, its insatiable
hunger for souls.
You must be prey, if you are not his.
She fled then, while Joalpey was still wrestling with herself.
Any later would be too late.
Shyri had been terrorizing the local wildlife, Stepped into her
Plains form, a Laughing Girl indeed. The deer and squirrels and
groundhogs and coyotes she scared up had no idea what she
was. A long-limbed, spotted demon with swift and terrible jaws,
she killed more by fright than by trauma, Asmander reckoned.
She killed more than they needed, too, but she was enjoying
herself, and he had no intention of stopping her. It was a bitter
realization but, of the three of them, she was the only effective
hunter in this country. He disdained to sully his Champion’s
shape for something as mundane as finding food, and neither
Old Crocodile nor the Dragon could hunt in such cold. The
year was supposedly getting warmer, but Asmander could only
assume that in the Crown of the World that word carried some
other meaning.
‘Come south to our country,’ Asmander had told the Laughing Girl. ‘Come hunt the channels of the estuary or the banks of
the Tsotec’s head and then we’ll see.’ But she just laughed at
him, and she was right to do so.
‘I will,’ she said, her grin widening from ear to ear as she
made him gut and spit the spoils of her pre-dawn hunt. ‘And I’ll
outdo you there, too. There is nowhere in the world my people
cannot thrive.’
‘Then why do you rule just a hand’s breadth of the Plains,
and no more? Where is the great Empire of the Hyena?’
Asmander demanded, nettled.
She put her face right in front of his, eyes to his eyes. ‘O leaping Champion, we are a patient people. We are not hasty. The
Plains are covered with the dust of those who have mounted
greatness and failed to keep a hold. We have seen the Aurochs
and the people of the Horn, we have seen the Cats come and go.
We will see these northern Wolves fall, and no doubt we will visit
the ruins of your own great city one day. We watch you all claw
up for the sun, and then burn, and we laugh. And when you
have all fallen, then we will walk the carrion road of your failure,
and we will rule.’
And she had him. He was staring into those wide eyes, struck
to the core with the certainty of it all, the manifest destiny of the
Laughing Men and the women who led them. He could see,
vividly in his mind’s eye, their dominion of bones, extending
from the cold north to the deserts beyond the Tsotec.
And then she laughed delightedly and pushed him away, so
that, off balance from squatting on his haunches, he tumbled
backwards. For a moment he was a crocodile, twisting and
whipping his bladed tail at her, and then he regained his feet
and his human shape.
‘You made it up,’ he snarled at her. ‘This is all your fantasy.’
‘Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,’ she grinned fiercely. ‘But you
recognized it for truth, didn’t you? I think you even liked it. A
strong woman to put her foot on your neck, eh? Is
that
your
type, O Champion?’
Venater sniggered: there was no other word for it. Asmander
glowered at the pair of them. ‘Mock all you want, a Champion
is chosen by the world. It is something you will never know.’
‘A Champion can’t even get his servant to gut a rabbit for
him,’ Shyri pointed out, not in the least put out.
‘It’s beneath him.’ Asmander looked down at his own slick
hands and smiled somewhat shamefacedly. ‘You’re right, I
should really take him in hand.’
‘Try it,’ Venater growled.
They had been hiding out here in the woods near the Shining
Halls for days now, in a shelter built of branches and leaves that
had not been meant to last this long. Every so often, Hesprec
appeared and assured them that all was well, but his business
was not yet concluded. Questions about whether this Wolf girl of
his needed rescuing or not were dodged nimbly, and then he
would be gone. That the locals were aware of them seemed inarguable – yet nobody troubled them, nor invited them within the
walls of the settlement either. And that was a shame, for the
Shining Halls looked as close to civilization as he had come in a
long while. In the manner of their building and carving Asmander
saw an echo of his own homeland, and wondered what ancient
architects had tracked north – or south.
‘What’s the point of him, if he won’t cook and clean for you?’
Shyri demanded.
‘I’m not his mate,’ the old pirate spat.
‘Are you not?’
‘Enough.’ Asmander stood up abruptly. He didn’t know what
had alerted him, but something was definitely wrong.
The other two abandoned their quarrel instantly. Shyri
Stepped smoothly, surging forwards into her high-shouldered
hyena shape. Venater took up his
meret
, the greenstone edge of
which he had been awake half the night sharpening.
A moment later Asmander spotted them: Hesprec returning,
and this time not alone, for a small Wolf girl dogged his footsteps. The sight filled him with gladness. It meant they could
move again, and it meant he could now fulfil his own mission,
one way or another.
Hesprec had paused, struggling for breath. The girl addressed
him briefly, and then she was a tiger, and the old priest a serpent
coiling in her jaws. Seeing that – such trust between them –
Asmander understood why the priest had demanded his
reluctant entourage wait for him. He pushed further thoughts of
his duty to the back of his mind.
Then the striped cat had flowed up the hillside towards them,
hardly seeming to need footholds. A second later Hesprec was
with them in human form, looking so worn out that Asmander
felt he could have held the old priest up to the sun and viewed
his bones through the man’s skin.
‘This is her, then?’ he asked lightly. Stepped back to her
human shape, the much-heralded girl seemed an insignificant
piece of work.
‘And now we go,’ Hesprec confirmed with uncharacteristic
directness. ‘Forgive me for ruining your breakfast.’
‘There are more rabbits,’ Shyri said happily, ‘always more
rabbits. This is good hunting land.’
‘A shame,’ Hesprec remarked wryly, ‘for we will be hunted.’
They set off as swiftly as possible, a Stepped Shyri leading
the way. Asmander had asked for the honour of bearing Hesprec, the priest’s whip-slender form tucked inside his tunic, next
to his bare skin. The girl changed too, not to the tiger but into
the compact form of a wolf, but he had been expecting that.
Asmander would have preferred to have the two Coyote traders with them, because the north remained a large, cold and
complex place in which to navigate. However, Two Heads Talking and Quiet When Loud had abandoned their company as
soon as they were close to the Shining Halls. The pair had
shown little confidence in Tiger hospitality.
Even so, at first it was simply a matter of finding the best
paths downhill through the trees, for it was more important to
put distance between them and any pursuers than to be clever.
As night drew on, then perhaps some application of cleverness
might be in order, Asmander considered, and that was where
they were more likely to run into trouble. Even a day out from
their starting point they would still be well within the Tiger’s
Shadow.
And yet, as dusk fell, he was aware that all sign of civilization
had been left behind save for the odd tumbled ruin. There was
no great sprawl of farms and herdsmen here, as there would
have been in the south. Asmander sensed that they would be
re-entering the domain of the Wolf before too long.
Which brings its own special problems
, he knew.
Shyri sniffed out a sheltered hollow, and they all bundled
themselves together to sleep, going without a fire but building a
shelter around them that would hold their body warmth near to
them. Even so, they were all awake and shivering well before
dawn.
‘Early start it is, then,’ Asmander declared, and he nodded at
the Wolf girl, Maniye, who had not said a word to anyone yet.
‘What’s she good for, then?’ Venater was more direct. ‘She’s
what all this is about? Why?’
‘Because it is my whim, and my will,’ Hesprec told him
sharply. Venater – no proper follower of Serpent – glowered at
him but stopped short of any direct challenge.
‘We are walking between fires, I am afraid,’ the old priest said
gently to Maniye, ‘and yet we must walk.’
‘Who is likely to be chasing us, and why?’ Asmander asked
him, posing a question necessary enough not to seem invasive,
although he was burning with curiosity.
‘All I know is that she came to me in the Tiger city,’ Hesprec
told him, ‘and she needed to leave. That was enough.’
‘You foresaw it,’ Asmander decided.
The old man shook his head tiredly. ‘If only the Serpent
could speak so clearly to me. It seemed to me that life in the
Crown of the World is seldom kind, and that the life of one halfWolf girl has not been kind, and that such unkindnesses might
not be shrugged away simply by exchanging one roof for
another. And so I came to the Shining Halls, and waited. And I
wish that I had not been needed there, and could have returned
to you alone. But sometimes the Serpent moves in your innards,
and you must learn to trust that movement, and follow it.’
‘What was it, though?’ Asmander asked plaintively. Somewhere in the question lurked the southerner’s civilized horror of
these northern people and their ways.
‘My mother.’ Maniye’s voice sounded flat and dead. ‘I found
my mother.’
Looks were exchanged between the rest of them, and then:
‘The Tiger did for her?’ from Venater.
‘Idiot, her mother must
be
Tiger,’ Shyri hissed.
‘Doesn’t mean they can’t—’
‘Quiet,’ Asmander hissed at them both. Maniye stared at
them: it was as though, after a day’s travel together, she was
seeing them for the first time. ‘You are as I thought men of the
far south would be,’ she remarked in a small voice, staring at
him.
‘As I said, the followers of the Serpent are special,’ and Hesprec then named them all, though Asmander could see that the
girl had problems with most of what she heard, traditions being
so different in these lands.
‘What was it about your mother?’ Asmander rested on his
haunches beside her, so as not to loom. He wanted to know
whether there was some rescue they would need to enact, or if
the older woman was dead.
Maniye took a deep breath. ‘She did not want me,’ was what
he barely heard, the words scarcely venturing beyond her teeth.
‘She would not look on me.’
Faced with that, he could only stand up and back off.