Wolf Hunting (73 page)

YOU SHOULDN’T EXPECT to come out of wrestling with a deity untouched, but Truth hadn’t quite expected Ahmyn’s touch to be so hard or so permanent.

What she hadn’t told the others was how these new white eyes of hers Saw all the time. Before she’d been able to slip in and out of her omen visions at will. Now she saw them all the time. Truth guessed it was Ahmyn’s way of reminding her what she’d been ready to give up.

Well, Truth certainly was reminded, and pretty much constantly confused. She thought that eventually she would learn to see what was real and what was shadow. When Firekeeper had roused Truth from querinalo’s hold, Truth had seen a gaggle of Firekeepers: one shaking her with her right hand, one with her left, another toeing her with a bare foot (and toeing her with the other foot), one prodding her from a distance with the end of her unstrung bow, another calling from a perch on Eshinarvash’s back.

That had been confusing enough. More confusing were the actions Truth saw herself taking: slashing out with a paw, rolling over and clawing with hind feet, bolting for cover and running. When she’d answered Firekeeper’s words with words of her own, Truth had hardly believed that this was her own real action.

In the days that had passed, Truth had learned to discern reality from possibility. Reality had acquired a brighter hue (or the visions duller ones). Yet even so the visions remained, ghost dancers overlapping the world she moved in with worlds her actions might create.

No, Truth hadn’t expected to come from wrestling with Fire untouched, but she hadn’t realized just how severely she’d be burned.

Oddly, Truth saw reality more clearly after nightfall than at any other time. This was because the visions persisted in appearing tinted with color, a faint wash that darkness did not grant reality. So she headed for the administration building with a fair degree of confidence, Firekeeper and Blind Seer pacing her, all of them moving with a bit less speed and confidence than was their wont.

When they came to the administration building’s main door, a dog-fox was waiting for them. (And Truth saw the realities in which they had been met by a bear, a puma, a doe, an osprey, by no one at all.)

“The humans are quiet,” the dog-fox said. “If they are not sleeping within their night lairs, then they are feigning such sleep. A few are awake in the kitchen, brewing tea and talking.”

“Are any of our own within the place?” Firekeeper asked.

“A bear dozes in the kitchen,” the fox replied, “and my mate and several raccoons keep covert watch in the upper reaches.”

“And the cellar?” Firekeeper asked.

“None are there. We have obeyed orders that we not give away our awareness of that section of the building, but from what we can hear all is quiet.”

“Lachen and Ynamynet?”

“Among those who were watched going from the public areas to their own—separate—chambers.”

Firekeeper grunted acknowledgment and glanced at the other two to see if they had anything to add. Blind Seer shook his head after the human fashion.

Truth looked at the options before her and saw many questions that could be asked and answered, but none that seemed imperative. Letting Firekeeper open the door with those useful hands, Truth followed the two wolves inside.

The large building was comparatively still. Somewhere in the upper reaches, a baby was shrieking in high, rhythmic cries. Booted footsteps moved purposefully down a corridor and in their cadence Truth recognized the patient doctor.

A woman’s belly laugh came faintly from the back of the house. Truth wondered if the entertainment being pursued included something more intoxicating than tea. However, although visions sought to become reality by luring her to investigate, Truth kept her course, fixing her gaze on Blind Seer’s tail to eliminate distracting images.

Exterior impressions invaded nonetheless, each tempting the jaguar’s attention to wander: an odor of fish from an otherwise pristine bit of carpet, a creak as some building timber protested the damp weather, the sensation of her paws moving from carpet to stone flagging. Truth focused as hard as she could on the present moment, and was rewarded by seeing Firekeeper carefully unlatch the dusty double-sided door that led to the lower reaches of the administration building.

There was no lock, nor did the hinges creak under the weight of the old wood. A scent of fresh oil and ancient rust answered why, and Truth (fighting images of what might have happened had the door been locked, had the hinges squealed, had an alarm been rigged) found clarity in focusing on the quality of the hinges’ construction and the care that had been taken that the door remain decrepit-looking, though the scent trails confirmed that this passage had seen steady use.

The area below was dark, and Firekeeper stepped back to let Blind Seer take the lead. She waited a moment to see if Truth cared to go before her, and when the jaguar hung back said softly, “Unless you can close the door, come quickly so I may do so.”

Truth, her mind blossoming with all the possible ramifications of doors left open and shut, padded in and stood on the landing while Firekeeper carefully closed and latched the door. Not questioning why the jaguar did not go before her, Firekeeper hurried after her pack mate. Truth came last, struggling to dampen images of the ramifications of questions asked, not asked, answered and not.

The stair was carved from the rock on which the headquarter’s building had been constructed. As they descended, their way was lit by a faint glow that came from blocks set intermittently in the masonry of the wall. These were at foot level and did little more than illuminate the treads, but Truth imagined that humans would have found them useful.

In this glow, Truth saw marks of chisel and hammer on the stone. This place then had been worked by human labor, not magic. She thought of the work involved, and wondered what had been so important that such work should be done. The stair angled right, then went farther down.

Now Truth saw what seemed to be native rock, untouched by tools. She understood that what seemed to be a cellar was actually a natural ravine. The building had been built over it, and again she wondered why. Surely the labor involved in cutting that staircase eliminated any benefit garnered from not having to excavate the cellar.

The stairway angled again, then, with a few almost anticlimactic steps, came to a halt. Wolves and jaguars are soft-footed creatures, but Truth thought that the sound of her breath indicated that they were in a large chamber. As she debated the merits of making a sound or not, perhaps a growl or a snarl or extending her claw and scraping the stone, Firekeeper’s husky voice, pitched low but not whispering, broke the stillness.

“So?” she asked. “What do ears and noses tell?”

“Blood,” Blind Seer said instantly. “Not in great quantities, but there.”

“Fresh earth,” Truth added, “broken stone. Familiar human scents: Ynamynet, Lachen, Skea, Verul, a few others.”

“Beeswax and lamp oil and the ashes of old fires,” Blind Seer said. “Perhaps Firekeeper would care to give us more light.”

“You scent no one here?” Firekeeper asked.

“No one here in the now,” Blind Seer reassured her. “As humans work by light, I think we will need light to see what they do here.”

Firekeeper grunted soft agreement and let Blind Seer guide her to where he smelled lamp oil. Taking from the bag she wore about her neck the fire-making tools that—like her knife—never left her, she struck spark to tinder and soon had lit both candle and oil lamp.

To eyes accustomed to seeing with very little light, these two pale glows revealed a great deal—and for Truth revealed more than she wished to see. Visions assaulted her of vengeful humans, alerted somehow by the light as they had not been by soft conversation, clattering in booted feet down the stair. They rolled from hiding in secret chambers, came brandishing swords and long-hafted spears.

True, these last images were fainter than the others, for even in the confused state of her thoughts Truth had some sense of balance, but even so she reared on her hind legs and struck at one of the more persistent images.

“Truth?” said Blind Seer, his question pitched on a rumbling growl.

“I’m fine,” she lied. “A bug or bit of ash.”

She could tell from the cant of the wolf’s ears that he did not quite believe her, but neither was he willing to challenge the veracity of her statement.

To distract herself from probing visions of what would happen if that challenge came, Truth forced herself to study the minute details of the chamber in which they stood.

She had been right when she had thought it a ravine, for that was precisely what it was—small by the standards of such in the open air, but making for a quite large, if irregularly shaped, room. Glancing up, she saw that the ceiling above was only partly human built.

“This must have been both cave and ravine,” Truth said, “and the building was built above it. I wonder why.”

She regretted the last statement, for Ahmyn’s generosity offered her a wealth of possibilities. Firekeeper’s blunt practicality broke these as a paw breaks a reflection.

“I wonder more,” the wolf-woman said, “that this place is so uncluttered. I am no human, but I have lived in their dens, and places like this are usually filled with overflow from their lives: vegetables or discarded furniture or some such litter. I have seen this in castles and in common houses. Why is this place so empty?”

“Not all empty,” Blind Seer said, indicating an area deeper in. “My nose tells me that some work is going on over there.”

“Let us look then,” Firekeeper said, but she continued to muse as she lifted lamp and candle, then followed the wolf. “True, this place was unused, the door swollen shut until a few days past, but I cannot believe that humans before querinalo were any less given to hoarding than those who have come after.”

Blind Seer led them (for Truth was too distracted to track anything herself, but could only follow and hope not to stumble) to what his nose had found. At first all Truth’s eyes saw was a jumble of rocks broken and moved back from a section of the wall rather smoother than those around. Then she heard Firekeeper hiss something that might have been a curse, and the random detritus fell into a recognizable pattern.

“There is a gate here,” Firekeeper said. “It was buried beneath that rock fall, but it is here. That is what they have been doing. It is as you said, sweet hunter, rabbits and their burrows. No wonder some dared smell of triumph. They thought to leave by this and bring back allies.”

Blind Seer was casting around, nose close to the ground. Here and there he sniffed deeply. Once he sneezed.

“The blood I have scented seems mostly to have come from this work,” he reported. “Where rock cut or crushed, not shed for spellcasting.”

“That is something,” Firekeeper said. “Then this thing is not yet alive.”

“I don’t think so,” Blind Seer said. “In a day or so, though … Truth has advised us well.”

Truth lashed her tail back and forth, then seized on one image among the many.

“We should check,” she said, “to make sure that this gate is the only such thing here. Above they built many gates close together.”

“Good,” Firekeeper said. “I will leave the lamp here, but take the candle.”

She did so, moving quickly as if hot on some trail. Blind Seer cast his search in another direction, and Truth paused to inspect the gate they had found before joining in the search. This gate was different from the one at the stronghold, for no effort had been made to hide it. Here the markings were carved deeply into the surrounding rock, the channel that would carry blood to fuel the spell cut broad and wide.

Truth sniffed, but no blood scent remained, though much must have been spilled here. Even as she realized the ludicrousness of this gesture, she also realized that she was tense and alert, every part of her straining for something that had not yet happened, but that she was certain must come.

It was with something almost like relief that Truth heard a scrape of leather against stone, a footfall from somewhere, though not the stair down which they had come. It did not belong to either of her companions. Both of them were unshod.

Truth did not need to alert Firekeeper and Blind Seer. Both had heard, and upon hearing, Firekeeper had snuffed the flame of her candle. Truth considered knocking over the lamp, but seeing the ramifications of this choice decided to leave it. The light had to have been seen, and humans were easily distracted by a bit of light. Instead, Truth took step after perfect step and melted soundlessly into the surrounding darkness.

XXXVI

FIREKEEPER RUBBED the still warm candle wick between thumb and forefinger to damp the last smouldering scent. Then she stood frozen and listened.

Footsteps, shod feet on stone stairs, more than one set. Three sets, perhaps, or five. Interestingly, they were not coming from the direction of the stair by which she and her companions had descended, but from another off in the darkness where her candlelight had not carried, in the direction in which Blind Seer had gone.

We might have guessed there would be another way into this place,
she thought,
with all our talk of rabbits and their burrows.

Firekeeper wasn’t worried about Blind Seer. The wolf would have heard the footsteps even before she had. Doubtless he was somewhere in the shadowed chamber, listening as she was.

Firekeeper was more concerned about Truth. The jaguar had been acting very oddly—although Truth had always been hard to figure out. However, as the wolf-woman heard nothing, she trusted that the jaguar, too, was waiting to see what this intrusion might bring.

The first paces were regular and business-like; then there was hesitation.

“Who left a lamp burning?” Lachen’s voice, the inflections accusatory, the language his odd version of Liglimosh.

Firekeeper felt fortunate he was speaking something she could understand, but then these mixed peoples must have a few languages that they chose to speak among themselves.