The Wolf

by Leo Carew

  Resurrected once again the following morning, the dreadful depressions created by Marrow-Hunter filled in and his limbs untwisted, Roper dressed to tour the streets once more. It was the coldest day yet of the winter and he wore two woollen tunics: one finely woven and close-fitting, worn next to the skin; one loose and thick which he pulled on over it and which he then belted about the waist. Goatskin gloves, elk-skin leggings, high oxhide boots with woollen socks, and his wolfskin cloak. As he pulled it on, something needled his back. Reaching a hand round, Roper discovered a little patch of cotton pinned to the inside of the fur. He inspected it briefly once and then glanced at it more intensely a second time, his gaze lingering on the image printed thereon.

  “What is it?” asked Keturah. She was half out of the door, already dressed, and her short hair covered by a cowl. She still had no feeling in her hands, making her unable to weave. Instead, she was going to the Academy to discover what she could about the Kryptea.

  “Nothing,” said Roper, balling up the cotton scrap and casting it on the fire. “Keep your enquiries subtle, won’t you?” She nodded. “I’ll see you this evening, Wife.” He kissed her and she departed, leaving Roper a little pile of food on his table: cakes of dried salmon and lingon berries. Roper put them in a large pouch at his belt, to which he attached Cold-Edge.

  On his way out, he cast one more glance at his hearth, beneath the great elk-head mounted on the wall. The piece of cotton was blossoming slowly as the heat of the charcoal caught it. It opened just wide enough for Roper to catch sight once again of the image printed on it: a spread-winged cuckoo. The cuckoo discoloured, the cotton turned grey and a small flame burst from the cloth. Roper did not wait to see it consumed; he was gone.

  He and Helmec walked the streets together. It should have been a cheering sight, for half a dozen communities were reopened that day, all trace of the plague gone. The area it affected had grown smaller and smaller and Helmec chattered happily about how it would soon be over.

  But Roper’s mind dwelt instead on the linen cuckoo in his cloak. Watch your back, that meant, he was sure. It was the Kryptea letting him know that what he had done to Uvoren’s friends, full subjects of the Black Kingdom and thus protected by its ancient customs, had been noted. A ruler had to rule, the Kryptea knew that. Sometimes he must discipline and make examples, so they would allow him some freedom. If he were to abuse it, however, he would be reintroduced to the matt-black blade, this time wielded by a skilled assassin. He hoped Keturah was safe, asking questions about that organisation.

  The linen cuckoo was their idea of a dialogue. If Roper wanted to survive the winter, he would need to come up with a riposte.

  The Academy had always been Keturah’s favourite building within the Hindrunn. Its position within the innermost wall of the fortress—a status awarded only to the Central Keep and the Holy Temple besides—marked it out as one of the Black Kingdom’s buildings beyond price. It took the form of a broad, stepped pyramid; the top echelon of which was a tower that rivalled the Central Keep in its reach towards the heavens. The lower levels were like desiccated honeycomb: more window than wall and more space than structure, eased into the island on which they stood by a slight meniscus. A deep defensive lake surrounded it, crossed by a solitary strand of stone. From the vines that scaled its earthenmost twenty feet, to its ancient alignment with the star Thuban, to the water that surrounded it, so clear that some evenings it was not easy to tell where the dry winter air ended and the lake began, it was perfect to Keturah. It was a better marriage of wilderness and refuge than she had seen anywhere else in their rugged country: the edge on which function and form combined. And at the apogee of this building was a great metal structure that burnt in bright sunlight and hardened before clouds: a cold silver eye.

  Keturah crossed the bridge (scarcely necessary at this time of year as the lake on either side was clouded ice), delivering a patronising smile to the berserkers who watched over the doors. These were the guardsmen of the Academy, trained to recognise the robes of the historians even when at their maddest, though Keturah remained scornful of the decision to entrust the security of the Academy to these most unstable warriors.

  She passed them, passed through the open stone arch behind, beneath a carving of a spread-winged angel with giant, spidery hands, and through the gaping jaws of the Academy. The hall within was fresh and cavernous, with the inner edges again lined with vines. Corridors led off on three sides and in the middle of this hall was a woman in the thick cream robes of an acolyte, kneeling next to a small fire set in a depression in the floor. The smoke was escaping through a hole in the roof and a blackened copper pot was sitting beside it, half-filled with tumbling water.

  Though her head was covered by a hood, there was something familiar about the acolyte’s posture. “Sigrid?”

  The acolyte looked up and Keturah saw the two light grey eyes of Gray’s wife shining like daylight beneath the hood. “Keturah.” Sigrid stood and gave Keturah her strange smile: a narrowing of the eyes and a slight raise at the corners of her mouth. The two women embraced over the fire. “You’re here to see the Chief Historian?”

  “I am. She knows I’m coming, where can I find her?” asked Keturah.

  “You wait here for her, but she’ll be some time. Share the fire with me.”

  Sigrid gestured at the empty stone floor and the two knelt together, Keturah a little too close so that her knees became uncomfortably hot and she had to retreat slightly. Sigrid gave the smile that was not really a smile and took up the copper pot, pouring some of the steaming water over a sprig of pine set in a wooden bowl. She offered the bowl to Keturah, who accepted with an inclination of her head and set it aside for a time, waiting for the brew to cool. The Academy was famously cold, hence the thick robes of both acolytes and historians and, in spite of the fire, Keturah found herself cooling swiftly on the damp day.

  “I heard you were coming,” said Sigrid, pouring a second bowl of hot water and pine needles which she took herself and set aside as Keturah had done. “I asked to be gatewoman today. Why do you want to see the Chief?”

  “There’s a chant I want to hear. And I have an interest in the acolyte’s robes. Have you settled on a cell yet?” A cell was a trio of historians, led by a senior academic, that specialised in the total recollection of four hundred and thirty-one years of history.

  “For now I am happy as an acolyte, but one day, perhaps the robes of a Deep Historian will appeal to me.” Sigrid paused for a moment. “Though I’m not sure I shall ever be ready to renounce my marriage. Unworthy a motive as it may be, I may end up joining a cell as my refuge.” To become a full cell member and thus be entrusted with the identity of the Black Kingdom, a woman had to renounce her marriage and live within the walls of the Academy itself. She became part of the country: something too precious to be chanced elsewhere, and too important to risk corruption through marriage and alliances to those outside the Academy. Sigrid meant that she was only likely to take this harsh and disciplined way of life when Gray was killed in battle: close to an inevitability for a man serving in the Sacred Guard.

  Keturah thought of herself as an astute judge of character. The motivations and temperament of others were there to see if she only looked, and she could not imagine a time when Sigrid would be unhappy. The older woman, though serious, had a serenity about her that made her company restful even though she barely talked. But that silence just seemed to make the words she did utter weightier. If Keturah was in awe of one person in the Black Kingdom, it was this woman. She was quiet, so Keturah was quiet too. Just being in the presence of her tranquil companion, beneath the sheltered stone of the antechamber and with the frozen lake stretching out before them, Keturah felt peace descending over her. The Academy offered clarity. Sitting here, the appeal of joining this institution was obvious.

  They were silent for a time. From a pouch at her belt, Sigrid produced a couple of handfuls of hazelnuts which she split with Keturah. The hazelnuts were
slightly dry so both women roasted theirs next to the fire and Keturah began to sip at her pine-needle tea. It was resinous, aromatic and refreshing.

  “Which is the chant you wish to hear?” asked Sigrid.

  Keturah was aware of only the faintest reluctance to share what she knew she should not. “Whichever one details the formation of the Kryptea. Do you know where it is?”

  “I know where,” said Sigrid, “though I cannot remember which cell has it. It is a famous chant: the Chief will be able to help you. Be careful how much you learn about those men, though. They have many ears, even in here, and if you want to know about their foundation, someone will report that to them.”

  “Not you, though?” said Keturah.

  “What do you think?” said Sigrid, staring out at the bridge. She put more wood on the fire. “But someone will.”

  “I doubt it matters. I’m no threat to them or the stability of the country,” observed Keturah.

  “It does matter,” said Sigrid. “They are an organisation of almost unlimited power and jealousy, entirely separate from the law. Sometimes I think the Academy is too reserved. Nobody asks about the Kryptea because nobody knows to ask. We don’t volunteer information unless people come to seek it.”

  “The only threat they pose is to my husband.”

  “And yet they murdered those two legionaries,” said Sigrid, referring to those who had been killed in retribution for Uvoren’s foiled attempt on Roper’s life. She took a sip of her own tea. “Everyone knew the Kryptea were not behind the assassination and so their name was unsullied, but they took vengeance anyway. That was an action of spite. Do not disregard the Kryptea.

  “You see those berserkers? We have thousands of them here, living below the pyramid. In full battle-madness, they would tear apart every bit of the Hindrunn beyond the lake. They could protect us from a legion, but they could not protect us from a Kryptean. We don’t know who they are, we don’t know how many they number. We don’t know how they are recruited, how they are trained, or if they have women in their ranks.”

  “They must,” said Keturah, “or they’re brainless. The women of this fortress are far freer in their movements than the men, and much less likely to be suspected of murder.”

  “No one has ever caught a Kryptean agent,” said Sigrid. “So we don’t know. The Kryptea is not the safeguard from tyranny that everyone thinks it is. The Ephors protect us from over-ambitious Black Lords. The Kryptea has no function beyond the long shadow that it casts. It is a toxic fungus whose roots go too deep to ever be cut out. I have learned what I can of them and, as far as can be told, no one has ever caught one of them. How do you stop them when you don’t even know how they act? Were those men killed beneath the cuckoo truly guilty? Everyone has just assumed they were.”

  Keturah considered this. “I suppose I never questioned it.”

  Sigrid touched her hand briefly. “Just take care.”

  “Everyone’s been saying that to me.”

  “You should heed their advice.” Sigrid glanced pointedly at Keturah’s newly sprouted hair.

  “I think you may be the first person who’s told me to take care where I may indeed heed it,” said Keturah.

  Sigrid thought about that for a moment. “Why?”

  “Usually, I’m told to take care by people who would be too scared to do what I’m doing. They tell me to take care because they wish they had the confidence to try it themselves and don’t want to be made to feel inadequate by someone doing what they would like to.”

  Sigrid was watching Keturah steadily. “Well, it’s true, I don’t have the faith in my own abilities that you have,” she said. “I think you’re right, a lot of the time, envy makes people react strangely. It bursts out of them before they know it. It is good to live bravely, but remember that inexperience can make you naïve. And with the Kryptea, you won’t get two chances to make a mistake. One will kill you.”

  The light was failing and there was a pink tinge to the sky in the west before the Chief Historian arrived, but Keturah had been prepared to wait on such an important woman and besides, she had Sigrid’s company. It was Keturah’s first encounter with the Chief Historian. She was almost as tall as Keturah herself, with a sheet of steel hair, white-blue eyes and heavily lined skin hanging from the startlingly prominent architecture of her face. “Keturah Tekoasdottir?” She stared down at the still-kneeling Keturah.

  “That is I, my lady,” said Keturah, getting to her feet and giving a polite smile.

  “Good. My name is Frathi Akisdottir.” The Chief Historian’s eyes had settled heavily on Keturah’s. “What can I do for you, miss?”

  “I have an interest in one particular chant and hoped that you might be able to take me around the Academy as well,” said Keturah. “I’ve had a long-standing interest in being an acolyte.”

  “You are very young to have had a long-standing interest,” observed the Chief Historian. “Which chant do you wish to hear?”

  “Whichever details the assassination of Lelex,” said Keturah.

  The Chief Historian did not react at all for a moment. Then she said: “The formation of the Kryptea?”

  Keturah shrugged. “Indeed.”

  “You will need to be swift,” said the historian. “The cells are nearly leaving for the evening run. Come.” She turned on her heel and started back through the corridor through which she had arrived: that on the right. Keturah waved at Sigrid, who semi-smiled in return and watched her leave.

  The corridor down which Keturah was being led skirted the outside of the Academy: an open colonnade that almost kissed the hard waters of the lake. It appeared, despite the rallying darkness and though it stretched in a broad arc that made it possible to see fifty yards ahead, that they were completely alone in the passage. Every five yards or so on their left was a door of flat, greyish-white wood that looked like it might be hornbeam: a wood that showed little mercy to its carpenters, both in its fiendish difficulty to work and its tendency to warp and crack. On the wall surrounding the doors were carvings: animal-headed angels; forges powered by lightning, churning out supernatural weapons; highly stylised, goblet-stemmed human figures that appeared to be giving direction to smaller people below them; disturbingly lean figures with narrow heads ranging across the walls. As Keturah advanced, the content and tone of the carvings began to change: a baby being plucked from a prone stone figure; serried ranks of soldiers; more figures that appeared to be spinning rivers in their laps that flowed over the walls. In many of the depicted scenes, Keturah noticed a figure in the background with giant, spidery hands; observing but not intervening.

  “The Academy is built to resemble the passage of time,” said the Chief, still striding several paces ahead of Keturah. “The cells use it as a memory aid, with each room used for a different chant. As with time, it can only be approached from one direction so that just by living in this space, my historians become intimately familiar with the period for which each is responsible. That also means we shall have to hurry to catch the cell you want.”

  “And which cell is that?” Keturah was tall and usually strong but she could feel the lingering weight in her legs from the poison, and the older woman was almost pulling away from her. The disciplined running regime built into life as a historian, thought to clarify the senses and improve the all-important memory, was said to make them the fittest women in the Black Kingdom.

  “Forty-seven thousand eight hundred from the Deep,” said the Chief Historian. “A time three thousand years ago.”

  As they walked, the curve of the corridor became tighter and when the lake disappeared from their right-hand side and was replaced by stone walls, Keturah realised they were spiralling into the centre of the Academy. There were doors on both sides now, seemingly still made of hornbeam, and a humming was beginning to fill the air, as though they drew close to the core of a bee-hive. But instead of a choir of workers, she found that at the centre of this spiral was a flight of steps that led upwards on to the s
econd floor. They were at the centre of another stone spiral, and without breaking stride, the Chief led her onwards. This time the doors on either side were made of a wood with a dark stripe of heartwood running up the centre of each board that Keturah could not place.

  “What wood are these doors?” she asked.

  “Rowan,” came the reply from ahead.

  They spiralled outwards, carvings still flashing past Keturah (a vast serpent covered in chain mail erupting from beneath the earth; enormous butterflies that snatched up racing figures; people without eyes, crawling through tunnels to piles of treasure within; always that spider-handed angel lurking behind, carved less deeply into the stone so that its presence was faint), the humming persisting and at times reverberating powerfully enough to make the doors rattle. After a rather shorter time than it had taken to navigate the first spiral, they came to the outside of this one. It was another colonnade that looked out onto the lake, but this one more elevated. Keturah reflected that the entire purpose of their journey so far had simply been to get to the first floor of the building. Apparently, this was not the end, however, for the Chief was leading her up another flight of stairs to another spiral corridor, this one with honeyed doors of beech.

  Keturah understood. By making the passageway of the Academy a multi-layered spiral, its builders had produced a single immense corridor some miles in length, with each storey demarcated by a different kind of wood, fresh carvings and a tally that helped distinguish it from its fellows. It was a parsimonious model of the river of time and, as each Historian remembered the period for which she was responsible, she would envisage the walk through this immense spiral. Each door was a different episode and, if they chose to enter it, they could perform an in-depth chant regarding the events of that particular period. That was the humming which Keturah could discern: the chanting of each cell, performing one of the hundreds of historic episodes they could recall. The entire structure was a memory aid.