“I am the leader of this hunt,” said the woman who clearly led this small pack. “I will speak with you.”
I lowered my arms and let the ward fall. It wasn’t my best work anyway, but hopefully it had been good enough to ensure that most of my wounds would close. I wanted to turn to look at Veralar, make sure she wasn’t going to do anything stupid, but breaking eye contact at this moment would be a death sentence for most of them, for at least two of us, and for the quest as a whole.
“Hail, huntleader,” I said. “I am called Derrek Rowan. I am known to the Black Ear Pack, and seek their territories. We are a mixed pack. The woman with the short dark hair is our huntleader. We are travelling through, hunting a dream, and have no designs to break the peace which has settled these last few years, or to take more of your game than is needful to feed us.”
She was tall, for the uurnigath – almost as tall as Elana – and stood strong and proud in her antler crown. Her leather loincloth and breastband were elaborately stitched and tooled. Her arms and legs were criss-crossed with scars that stood bright white against her dark walnut colored skin, visible even under the thick hair. I knew that each of the knots that bound the crown together had a meaning, as did each of the beads that hung from her neck and belt, but I had not stayed with the Black Ears long enough to interpret those signs.
She held my gaze intensely for a long minute before she looked away, barking an order at her hunters to give us more space. And so they did, lowering their weapons and backing up until they stood among the wolves.
“Hail, Derrek Rowan,” she said at last, looking at me with half-hooded eyes. “I am called Briar. We are the last of the Flint Knife Pack, sworn to protect our lands and peoples against vencari settlers. But you claim a dream quest, and have gone to great effort not to hurt us, so we will honor that claim. And you bring an elf, whose people have always been good to us.”
If the uurnigath had had a word for “human” before the settlers and the war, it had been lost, supplanted with “vencari”.
“Thank you, huntleader Briar,” I said. Now, at last, I could turn to look at my own people. They had gathered behind me, forming a tight circle around the bloody and battered prince.
“The crowned one is the leader of this hunting pack,” I told them, resuming the language of the Compact. “Her name is Briar and she has agreed to permit us passage through the Wolfwood.”
“Good,” said Elana, terse, probably from the pain.
“Well thank the gods for that,” murmured Orland.
I turned back to Briar and spoke in her tongue again.
“We do not know whose territory we cross,” I said. “Our dream is urgent, but we also need to eat and to tend our injuries and to rest before we continue our search for the Black Ears. To whom must we make this request?”
Briar nodded slowly, a gesture made infinitely more dramatic by her crown.
“This territory is neutral,” she said after a moment. “No packs claim the wood within a day’s run of the river at this time. The Flint Knife will grant your request. We will also escort you to the Black Ears. This will save you from finding trouble. Or making it.”
I nodded slowly in return.
“Thank you,” I said, sincerely. “We are grateful and honored.”
“You are honored,” she agreed with no irony whatsoever. “We will lead you to a place where you may make camp. There is a spring there where you may tend your wounds.”
“Thank you,” I said, and relayed all of that to my companions.
We took a hasty inventory of our battle damage. None of us were so hurt that we could not follow the uurnigath to the campsite they intended for us. And it proved to be a short walk, following the same line of upthrust earth that we had used to make our ford, and down a path that I, at least, would have mistaken for a trail fit only for goats until huntleader Briar descended it ahead of us.
A stream ran over the ridge from upland, carving out a series of shallow pools that emptied into each other, one to the next, before pouring into a gently steaming geothermal pool that was easily large enough for our entire party to bathe in. The rock around the pool was warm to the touch, but not hot. The grotto was overhung by rock and branches, thick with moss. The place was so beautiful and magical feeling that I could not imagine that it was not home to some nymph or naiad, sylph or satyr.
Huntleader Briar barked a handful of names and pointed to various locations around the grotto. Those she had named took their assigned places, each with a wolf at their side.
“We will leave you,” she said to me, “to lick your wounds.”
I nodded solemnly.
“Relieve yourselves downstream,” she went on, pointing to a corner where the ground cutaway sharply. “We will come for you when we come for you.”
“Thank you, huntleader Briar.”
She grunted and disappeared off into the trees.
The six of us exchanged a complex series of glances. Eventually Elana shrugged, and began to undo the straps of her breastplate. Rennin and Orland followed suit. Soon, they were stripping off their tunics, as well.
Veralar looked at the pool, at our disrobing companions, at the barely-dressed uurnigath that had been left to guard us.
“Ancestors and ancient masters,” she swore. “I give up. You win. It’s taken you twenty years, but you win. Infinite mothers preserve me.”
So saying, she stripped unceremoniously, peeling off the sweat-damp spidersilk with as much dignity as humanly possible. She folded her clothes carefully atop her boots and beside her weapons, and descended into the pool. Her face was scarlet and her shoulders were stiff as she fought the impulse to cover herself.
We had made arrangements to preserve her modesty before. We would have done so now, however difficult the venue made it, if she had let us. After her declaration of defeat, however, it was impossible not to at least look.
She was in her middle fifties, and discomfort robbed her of her carefully honed grace, but Veralar was still both the most muscular and the most voluptuous of all of us, and easily the most beautiful after Elana and Rennin. There had been some hint of that, given the skintight nature of her spidersilk vestments, but the full reality was breathtaking. A few scars marked her olive skin, but fewer than I would have expected. Either the Shan Khul did magically heal cleaner than most mortals, as rumor held, or she had been a genius from the very beginning.
I followed in after.
Bathing together like this, the toll of the morning’s battle was very clear. Of the six of us, only Veralar was uninjured. Khanaarre’s wounds were all closed – she had done a better job of channeling them into magic than I, which impressed but did not surprise me – but dark bruises were beginning to show on her red-brown skin. My right arm was bleeding again. Rennin sported a long line of claw marks across his thighs. Orland’s nose had clearly been broken again. To our collective dismay, Elana was the most badly wounded of us, having taken serious defensive wounds to both arms, a long gash across her thigh, and a smaller one across her face.
Rennin, Khanaarre, and Veralar surrounded the prince, helping to clean the wounds, and discussing how to best stitch and bandage them once they were dry. When they were done, Elana and Rennin turned their attentions to Orland. Veralar stepped back, not yet ready to tend to a man while they were both naked. To my surprise, Khanaarre came over to me.
She examined my right arm carefully, cleaning my half-closed wounds as gently as she had Elana’s.
“I think your blacksmithing saved your life,” she said, pointing to where a particularly deep cut ended abruptly where the claw had met my steel bracelet.
“You may be right,” I agreed.
She held on to my arm, but raised her head to look me in the eye. Her eyes were large and liquid brown, you could barely see the whites. Her heart shaped face was soft, despite the sharp angles of her cheekbones and her chin. Her ears swept down as she considered her next words, then back up when she spoke.
“You helped our enemy make himself invulnerable,” she said. “Why did you not do the same for yourself?”
Such an obvious question. And yet I had not anticipated it.
“Because I never wished to be the emperor,” I said. “Or the emperor’s consort. Or anyone else whose life might be in danger at any time and in any place. I have only ever wanted to live in the world.”
Everything I had said to any of them was true enough. But that was an honest answer, which was not the same at all. And, to both her credit and my dismay, Khanaarre saw through it right away.
“And yet you have named your price as a tower at the edge of the world.”
I could only shrug.
She looked at me like I was a wounded thing. That stung a little, which irritated me even more than the look, itself, did. After all these years, after all my accomplishments, there was some part of me that was still that child, wounded unto death by poisonous fraternal treachery, who had been found wandering in the snow and brought back to a place where I could at least die warm.
“I want to be able to see my visitors coming,” I said, making a joke of it. “Perhaps I will take on an apprentice. Or expand my tower into a school. I will not be welcomed back to the Obsidian Cabal when Elana sits the throne.”
“A noble ambition,” she said.
When I climbed out of the pool, she followed me. She left to dress while I dried myself, but came to help me with my bandages as soon as I had regained my pants and breastband. Veralar was dressed by then, too, and was helping Orland with his wounds. Elana and Rennin lingered in the pool the longest, only emerging when Veralar insisted that Elana’s wounds be salved and bandaged before infection could set in.
“Thank you,” I said to Khanaarre, when she was done.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and went to join Veralar in salving and bandaging the prince’s wounds.
I pulled on my tunic and found a semi-comfortable corner of rock in which to sit and watch. When her own wounds were tended, Elana moved first to check on Rennin, who had suffered Orland’s ministrations with dignity. Then she turned her attention to her Orland, patting his cheek and slapping his back when he proved hale. She turned to Veralar, next, speaking to her warmly, presumably congratulating her on her masterful fighting this morning. Khanaarre came next, enduring the prince’s examination of the new scars on her arms and the more prominent bruising on her wrists and back. Finally, she came over to me.
“We owe our lives to your magic and your diplomacy,” she said, “as much as we do to Veralar and her staves. Thank you.”
“You are kind to say so,” I demurred. “Thank you.”
“I am not,” she said. “It is the simple truth. And I have been harsh with you, since we left the mines.”
I nodded.
“Whatever came before,” she said, “you are here now of your own free will, and I am grateful.”
“Thank you, your grace.”
“Khanaarre says that she has tended your wounds? That you are well?”
“Somewhat worse for wear,” I admitted. “But I will live.”
She laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. Then she returned to Rennin, settling into the wall of the cliff face beside him.
A quiet romance was budding under our noses, I thought. That should come as little surprise. The six or eight years of age that had separated Crown Prince and the Iron Guard Captain that I had snuck from the imperial palace had been vast when she was just sixteen. Nine years and counting later, that gap was less significant, and I imagined that either one of them could name every day of those nine years that they had spent apart. I had thought that I had detected a tension of conflict between them as we rode from So’renner to Liddarn, but who knew what had passed between them while I answered a decades’ worth of questions from the wizards and priests and generals of the court-in-exile? Or what had changed, now that we were on this quest and the very real possibilities of victory and death loomed on the horizon?
We gave them the space we could. Orland found himself a corner of the grotto in which to nap. Khanaarre and Veralar sat by the edge of the spring, gently washing and oiling Khanaarre’s multitude of braids. I found my own quiet corner in which to sit and meditate, readying myself for the trials to come.
Meanwhile, the afternoon passed into evening. The spring air cooled around us, but we were kept pleasantly warm by the same geothermal action that warmed the pool. We were just beginning to forage the edges of the grotto for firewood when the bulk of the Flint Knife Pack returned.
Briar led them in, of course. Her hunters trailed behind her, the foremost of them marching in pairs with fresh-killed game strung up between them. The first pair came bearing a massive buck, the second a yearling, and the last a great black boar.
“Out of respect for your dream quest,” Briar announced, her back straight and her voice ringing with command, “and for your powerful restraint, and your friendship with the Black Ears, we will share our hunt with you tonight.”
I expressed our gratitude, and then translated it all for my companions. They chorused their gratitude as well, which I translated in turn.
I knew for a fact that the Children of Enhyl could and often did eat their meat raw, but they also enjoyed more sophisticated culinary arts than any Vencari would suspect. They also came bearing firewood, and un-buried a clearly well-used firepit where they set up a series of spits to roast the game. By the time the kitchen was assembled, other uurnigath had skinned and gutted and dressed the carcasses so that they might be easily cooked.
Briar approached me from behind as the deer went over the fire.
“This is my son, Shadow,” she said without preamble. “He wishes to know how your yellow-haired companion fights as she does. We have fought many vencari. None have moved like her.”
The young man stepped forward. He was taller, even, than his mother. He was also even darker skinned and darker haired, with fewer visible scars. His broad face, if I was reading his expression correctly, was open and inquisitive. He was one of the spearbearers, and also carried a looted sword – an ornate kopis that had probably belonged to an officer.
“Hail, Shadow,” I said, nodding respectfully. “The woman you ask about is called Veralar Tann. She is from a pack of hunters called the Shan Khul. They train from the time they are very young, and draw their strength from something like spirit-strength.”
“Shan Khul,” Shadow pronounced the word carefully.
“Like xian g`ul?” Briar asked.
My back stiffened.
“Yes,” I said, cautiously. “Though they do not remember that word. It is interesting and disturbing that you do, and that you can speak of it.”
Briar laughed.
“No more disturbing than your own like knowledge,” she said. “Or that you leap so quickly to keep the secrets of the rhu xian for them, vencari.”
I grunted noncommittally. Briar laughed again. Shadow watched both of us warily.
“The Children of Tal Thannuu cannot bind the Children of Enhyl,” she said. “But we keep the peace. We will remember that the Shan Khul are not the xian g`ul, and none shall put anyone in danger by asking again.”
I dipped my head a little lower than before.
“Thank you, huntmaster.”
She nodded. Shadow relaxed.
“Something like spirit-strength, you say?” he asked me.
I shrugged.
“I have not stalked it,” I said, “only heard rumor. I cannot explain it in my own language, let alone yours.”
He nodded.
“But,” I went on, “You can watch her practice her art tonight and in the morning, if you wish.”
Evening passed into full night. The six Prince’s Fighters huddled together near the water while the Children of Enhyl laughed and barked and caroused at the edge of the treeline. An uncanny figure hovered in the shadows with them, likely the immortal who made their home here in this spring. We slept without setting watch – what could any of us do against so many? – and woke in the morning ready to travel.
The Flint Knife’s offer to guide us to the Black Ears’ territory solved the biggest challenge of this phase of the venture. Not only did we need not simply crash through the woods, hoping to find some territory I recognized even though I had previously come to the Wolfwood from the west rather than the south, but we would come announced, with a proper escort, which would aid our cause, providing my requests with a momentum they would not otherwise have had.
We made better time than we would have without them, too, even if we had known the way. The forest seemed to part for them, keeping their pace steady and their steps silent. We were caught up in this transmutation.
The whole of the hunting pack was never visible all at once. Children of Enhyl appeared and disappeared, sometimes seemingly replaced by a wolf between one step and the next, sometimes simply vanishing before our eyes. Only Briar, adorned with her antler crown and loping at the front of our column beside a red-grey wolf large enough that she literally could have ridden it, and Shadow, tall and lanky for one of his people, and always within a dozen paces of Veralar, never seemed to disappear.
The journey took two days from the grotto to the Black Ears Pack den. During that time, the Flint Knife pack set the pace, chose our camp, and supplied our food. The first day they were curious and jovial, asking questions about the party – chiefly, who was fucking who, and how could Veralar Tann do the things she did, and what sort of magics did Khanaarre and I possess. The second day was more somber. We were fully into Black Ears territory, now, and we had not been invited, which meant conflict was a very real possibility.
Thankfully, it did not come to that. Whichever hunters Briar sent ahead as heralds, they did their work well, and when we came to the palisade walls of the Black Ears den we and the Flint Knife Pack were admitted with the same wary hospitality.
Inside the palisade walls were the three great longhouses and double-handful of smaller buildings that I remembered, each with crude wooden walls and roofs made from thatched evergreen branches. It was hard to see, though, for the hold was full of every uurnigath of the Black Ear pack and what looked like a good deal more, besides. Short and tall, dark and light, wide and narrow, thickly furred and all but naked, young and old, men and women and neither, the Children of Enhyl waited with uncanny stillness.
Somehow, without words or even gestures that I could see, my companions and I were cut off from the Flint Knife pack and herded toward the short, dark, hairy man who sat before one of the small, circular huts at the far edge of the village. His hair was so dark and thick that I could barely see his black eyes glittering behind his shaggy bangs. Since I had seen him last, he had taken to braiding bones and bits of jewelry into his hair and beard.
“Songlover,” I said his name in his language, “it is an honor to see you again.”
“Derrek Rowan,” he said in the language of the Compact. “You return at last. And in the company of Vencari. And an elf.”
“So I do,” I said, deferring to his choice of languages. It was an unexpected relief, honestly. “May we sit with you?”
Songlover grunted and gestured to the ground where we stood.
I sat. I could hear my companions following suit behind me.
“What brings you back to Enhyl’s Garden?” he demanded, using the translation we had worked out for the uurnigath name for the Wolfwood. His back was stiff and his tone was harsh. Was he truly angry, or posturing for the benefit of his people? “Particularly, what brings you in the company of Vencari armsmen?”
The directness of the Children of Enhyl was both refreshing and bracing.
“We are on a great quest,” I said. “We seek the Eastern Veil and to cross into the Holy Lands.”
Songlover laughed.
“No,” he said.
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