The Tiger and the Wolf

by kindle@netgalley. com

  ‘I don’t know you.’ Maniye was still motionless. Inside her, she could feel the first stirrings of her souls reacting to the surprise.

  ‘But I know you, a little at least,’ the girl said, taking one small step forwards.

  She must be one of the children that the Horse trade for, Maniye realized, recalling something of this sort she had been told. ‘You were at the trading post? Or you’ve heard them talk of me from Thunder and the southerners?’ Is it just because she’s of Asmander’s people that I think I recognize her?

  The girl nodded. She seemed to be very amused about something, but then Asmander behaved like that too, so maybe it was a Riverlands habit. ‘I wanted to talk with you.’

  ‘Why?’ And then, because she did not want to get drawn into a rambling conversation with a stranger, ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Please, do not leave until we have spoken. It’s very important.’

  Maniye bared her teeth. ‘What’s it to you?’ she hissed. ‘I need to go. It’s safer for everyone.’ Even that was more than she should have said, but that maddening sense about the dark girl was drawing out the words. It was not that she was like Asmander: in fact, the more Maniye studied her, the less like Asmander she became, and yet the more familiar.

  The girl took another step, as careful as if she was approaching a wounded animal. The firelight touched further on the brown of her skin, striking rainbow colours there. Maniye started in surprise: there were patterns tattooed on to her skin, gleaming where the light revealed them – endless loops of scales that wound about her forehead, cheeks and neck.

  The sight brought a lump of loss to Maniye’s throat, for of course someone already had died for her. ‘I have to go,’ she whispered.

  ‘Maniye, there’s no need.’

  ‘Don’t use my name! I don’t know you. I owe you nothing!’ Maniye was fighting to keep her voice down, sure that there must be people stirring into wakefulness in all the tents around them.

  ‘But I owe you, Maniye. I owe you more than a life can repay,’ the girl told her solemnly. ‘Won’t you sit with me just a little, and talk? And if you still want to go, you can be gone long before dawn. But I hope you will stay, for me.’

  Maniye opened her mouth, and what came out was: ‘You look like . . .’ Her legs were suddenly unsteady. ‘You came to find him, didn’t you? You came looking for Hesprec Essen Skese.’ Abruptly her heart was pounding in her chest, and just drawing in a breath had become a struggle. The far horizons she had set her aim at contracted to the here and now. She lurched into a gap between the two last tents of the camp and sat down there, almost collapsing. ‘You’re . . . you look like him: granddaughter, or granddaughter’s daughter, or . . . ?’

  ‘We are close. Not as close as we should be, I sometimes think.’ Still the girl seemed amused, and Maniye had a horrible feeling that nobody had told this child about the old man’s death.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she got out.

  ‘Of all things, you have no reason to be sorry.’ The girl sat down beside her, hugging her knees for warmth.

  ‘He was taken by my father’s people. I tried to rescue him but . . . it was too late.’

  ‘It was not,’ the girl told her with absolute assurance.

  ‘He . . . they had hurt him. He was weak, and we ran so far, so fast, but it wasn’t enough.’ Inside her, the Wolf was howling mournfully at a remembered moon, while the Tiger lay smouldering in shadow, its head down on its paws.The simple thought of all she had gone through had cowed them both. She was not weeping, she refused to, but inside, her souls mourned on her behalf. ‘I thought I could do it.’

  The girl’s thin arms encircled her cautiously. ‘Ah, forgive me. I am too cruel,’ she whispered. ‘I am too fond of jokes that amuse only myself. Maniye, none could have done more than you did. A death in the mouth of the Wolf is a death for all time. Preventing that is all that the world asked of you, and you did it. You have no weapons against time and old age.’

  Maniye stared at her, bewildered by the words, the tone. The girl’s light voice was speaking as though Hesprec’s ghost was in her.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered, staring into the other girl’s eyes, seeing there such a weight of experience and wisdom and dry old humour that she could hardly stand to look.

  42

  The dark girl sat beside her, at the edge of the camp. The fires were behind, the measureless night extending before them. There were wolves in that night, and the sullen shadows of tigers, but for once Maniye had no thought for either. Knowledge was echoing inside her, making her head ring like a bell. She had come to the brink of Revelation, that deep understanding of the world that changes all things. It was not something that she was equipped to deal with. A great many things she had once thought were immutable had become fluid and uncertain through just a handful of words.

  ‘I told you, when we first met, that my people were special,’ the strange girl told her, grinning with bright teeth. ‘You were asking then – you thought southerners were dark, burned black by the sun. And, as you see, we are.’

  ‘Hesprec wasn’t.’ Because Maniye could not bring herself to say, ‘You weren’t,’ as if such things were everyday matters.

  The girl shrugged, smiling. ‘And, if I have the chance to grow old once more, then, when I am old and my skin grows loose and brittle on me again, I shall seem pale to you once more.’

  ‘And . . . and then?’ Just a whisper, from Maniye.This felt like either madness or the sort of lore that gods guarded jealously.

  But the girl continued, quite unconcerned with supernatural retribution. ‘And then I shall find myself somewhere alone, and at the end of my body’s strength, and I shall seek peace and go find the Serpent beneath the earth. And I shall touch his coils, and partake of our mystery, and I shall be born anew and be young once more, just as I am now.’

  ‘As a boy – a man, I mean?’

  Again that carefree shrug. ‘Who can say how matters may fall out? I did not know, this time, if I would succeed. I thought that it might be a final death, despite all your bravery. The Crown of the World is a long way from those places where the Serpent is strong. But my faith is rewarded: he is beneath the earth even here.’

  And Maniye could restrain the question no longer. ‘How many times?’

  ‘How often have I shed my old skin?’ The girl’s eyes glinted as she looked at her.

  ‘Yes, are you . . . ? You told me, during the winter, of the Oldest Kingdom that your people lost at the start of the world. Were you . . . ?’

  ‘Was I there?’ The girl laughed gently, and it was that sound which made her Hesprec. A young throat, but an old laugh. ‘No, no, I’m not so old that I laid any pair of eyes on those wonders . . .’ And then she grew reflective. ‘But I spoke once with an old, old priest who did, or so he said.’

  Maniye felt an almost crippling sense of time, for here was an ancient being in the body of a thirteen-year-old girl, speaking in awed tones about one who had been truly old.

  And at last Hesprec sighed, and admitted, ‘Eight times, now, and that is plenty of years enough.’

  ‘Were you a man or woman? First of all, I mean.’

  ‘You know, I’m not sure I can remember.’ Hesprec shook her head. ‘A little of the memory sloughs off with the skin, each time. We shed our childhoods soon enough.’ She looked up, finding the moon in the sky just as that pale crescent cut its way out from the clouds. ‘And will you leave now?’

  ‘Leave?’ For a moment Maniye could not think of what she meant.

  ‘You were planning to go. Because you did not want to hurt people, I think.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘The Tiger has been here, but two days ago.’

  Maniye stared at her.

  ‘They came asking after you,’ Hesprec continued. ‘None was there then whom they might have marked. But their queen was with them.’

  An uncertain, shocked sound escaped Maniye as though she had been stabbed. ‘The queen
. . . ?’

  ‘She did not announce it, but these eyes of mine knew her,’ the girl confirmed. ‘And no doubt there will be wolves howling beyond the camp soon enough.’

  ‘Then I must leave.’

  ‘Leave in the daylight. Leave with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I owe you a debt. I know that some of the others have fought for you, for their own reasons, but I owe you my life twice over, and what I can do for you, it shall be done.’ Hearing so young a creature make so solemn an oath should have seemed absurd, but there was a current of certainty in Hesprec’s voice that most people could have lived a hundred years and not achieved.

  ‘You can’t help me. My father and my mother hunt in vain, because I will destroy myself. My body has three shapes and they are at war. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to save myself.’ And all her resolve had crumbled with the words, leaving her voice shaking. ‘I have too many souls, and they’re tearing me apart.’

  Hesprec put a youthful arm about her shoulders and hugged her close. ‘The Serpent hides many secrets, and the Crown of the World contains more than one seam of wisdom. There are . . .’ And then the girl trailed into silence, cued by a change in the way Maniye held herself. ‘Or perhaps you have thought of something,’ Hesprec finished quietly.

  Maniye looked at her, feeling as though she had donned the halved face of an Eyrieman: wolf eye, tiger eye; tiger eye, wolf eye: her souls jostling behind her visage. But, yes, her own words had sparked a thought, an unlooked-for avenue of enquiry.

  ‘I will stay,’ she said softly. ‘For now, I will stay.’ There was a conversation she needed to have and she was not looking forward to it.

  In the morning she watched as Loud Thunder made a fuss of his dogs, teasing them and scratching under their jaws and throwing them scraps of fish. She could never quite get used to dogs: the language of their bodies was so like wolves, and yet so different. Time after time she thought they were attacking Thunder for real, and then it became clear they were only playing after all.

  After that – for she was still working up courage – she watched the Horse and their fellows wading about in the broad, shallow basin of the river. She realized by now that more than one set of eyes was fixed on her, watching to see what she would do. There was an awareness in Broken Axe’s look that suggested he knew she had been on the point of fleeing overnight, and of course there was Hesprec. She had thought that the Serpent priest’s eyes should have been a fixed point, some part of him that he would carry forward, shed his skin as he might. Instead, the dark girl looked back at her from wide eyes of bright copper, and there was nothing of Hesprec in that gaze at all.

  A shadow fell across her, as she stared across the water. She glanced up, then further up, for this was a tall man of the Horse, long-boned and even-featured.

  ‘Blessings of the morning on your road, child of the Wolf,’ he intoned formally, bringing his hands together before him. He was keeping a precise distance between them, and she reckoned it was calculated as the reach of her arm if she had a knife to wield in it. That this long-boned, broad-shouldered man should be so wary of her was almost funny.

  She opened her mouth, trying to think of something equally elegant to say in reply, but what came out was, ‘I know you.’ She was abruptly back at the Horse outpost on the Sand Pearl, where she and Hesprec had gone to seek passage south. There had been a fat man leading the Horse back there, but when the Winter Runners came hunting, it had been this tall, fine-featured youth who had come bearing food and clothes and warning.

  He nodded solemnly. ‘I have been a servant of your host, during another season. I am—’

  ‘Alladei, Hand-son of Ganris,’ she recited. A moment later she felt herself colouring, for to remember the man after so long seemed oddly embarrassing. He was striking, though, and she remembered thinking so the first time she had set eyes on him.

  His eyes widened, but then he nodded. ‘You do me much honour. You are the one they call Many Tracks. Welcome to our camp. My camp, as my hand-father has trusted me with this expedition.’

  She nodded cautiously, still aware of the respectful distance between them. ‘What is it the Horse has travelled so far for?’

  ‘Travel is life and breath to the Horse,’ he declared. ‘But here is where we gather magic stones.’

  She blinked. ‘Magic . . . ?’

  He reached into a pouch and came out with a thumbnail-sized orb of translucent gold. ‘They love these so much on the River that they will shower us with wealth for them. They love stones of all kinds: turquoise, serpent-stones, tiger’s eye. But for magic, they must have the river-gold, these sun stones. Look, this is a cursed one.’ He held it out to her. ‘There is a little demon caught within it. With this their priests can do great magics.’

  She squinted closer, seeing in the murky depths of the stone a tiny hunchbacked shape, a suggestion of veined wings, a tangle of thread-thin legs. A fly? She reached out to touch it, and he pulled the stone back hurriedly, holding it to his chest as though it might give him some protection from her.

  ‘I’m . . .’ Maniye managed a weak laugh. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

  ‘Such was never my thought, but we know by now that there are those who would hurt many to reach you. Would they risk the enmity of the Horse Society to do so? Who can say?’ He gave a sad smile, but she felt a chill run through her.

  ‘I cannot stay.’

  ‘You are our guest. My guest, since my hand-father has trusted me with this expedition. I shall shelter you as befits a host, so shall my family and all who heed me.’

  ‘And, as I am your guest, I cannot stay,’ she completed.

  ‘I would we might meet in happier times.’

  She thought it was just a Horse pleasantry, but his eyes were still on her, and abruptly she felt uncomfortable.

  ‘I must . . .’ And she had spotted her quarry now, out beyond the tents along with his fellows. ‘I’m sorry, I must . . .’ But Alladei was nodding, saving her from hunting down further words.

  Asmander was performing some sort of dance with his sword. It was not like the Tiger dances, intended to be interlaced with the leaps and raking claws of an animal. Instead, she watched as he and his stone-toothed weapon moved about one another, performing an exercise in balance. Asmander killed invisible foes for her, the sword curving and striking, but never still, and he never still at its other end, so that they seemed equal partners in the fight.

  The other two were nearby: southerners together. The laughing woman had been watching the dark man intensely, and now she turned the same keen gaze on Maniye. The big old warrior was just lying on the ground with his eyes closed, letting the morning sun warm him.

  When one of his strikes brought him round to face her, Asmander stopped his practice and just waited for her to approach, his weapon still to hand. His face was unreadable, save that he did not look happy.

  Standing out of reach of a strike from that jagged blade, she took a deep breath and met his eyes. It’s time we spoke.

  He nodded curtly, not needing her to say the words. ‘Go, find some other to bother,’ he told his friends.

  ‘Hmm?’ Venater opened his eyes, registered Maniye, then waved a hand idly. ‘I’m comfortable. Yo u go, if you want.’

  ‘And I want to hear her put her claws in,’ Shyri said pleasantly. ‘So speak, Wolf girl – or Tiger girl, is it? Tell the Son of Asman what you think of the honour of the Riverlands.’

  Asmander scowled at her, but his face was composed as he turned back to Maniye. ‘So, speak.’

  In truth, ever since seeing him in the Wolf camp she had baffled herself over what she might say to him, whether she should condemn or thank him, or just ignore him. But now her life was easier, in this small way. Now she knew exactly what she must say.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that – any of that,’ she told him. Now her life had contracted into a single knot and she could not indulge herself in raking over histor
y. ‘What was that thing you Stepped to, there in the camp?’

  ‘That?’ Asmander frowned. ‘That is Old Crocodile. That is the shape of my people, the Patient Ones, lords of the river.’

  ‘And that’s a . . . this is something that exists, where you come from?’

  Venater snorted, eyes still closed: ‘Is she stupid?’ And Shyri snickered.

  ‘Why would she know?’ Asmander chided. ‘This land is too cold for Old Crocodile. But, yes, they are common all along the Tsotec – the river of my people.’

  ‘Then what is the other shape you take?’ Maniye demanded of him.

  ‘That is the Champion. I told you so before.’

  ‘But what is the Champion?’ she demanded. ‘I have heard the Eyriemen talk of their Champions. I saw Yellow Claw take on the Great Eagle’s shape, when you fought him, and when he snatched me from the ground. So what is your Champion?’

  Understanding her at last, he nodded. ‘It has many names, like your hunters do. The Champion is Running Lizard, he is Killing Claw, Swift Reaver. But he is no beast that is known to men. The Champion comes from deep time, the priests say, a shape from the days before our fathers ever fled to this land. It came to me and it chose me to bear its soul. It is a great burden, a great glory . . .’ His voice trailed off, because Maniye was staring at him fiercely.

  ‘Then it’s true,’ she hissed. ‘I didn’t think of it before, but it’s true. You have two souls. You live with two souls.’

  ‘The soul of a Champion is not like . . .’ And he was shaking his head. ‘No, I know why you ask, but this is not what you seek. You are torn between Wolf and Tiger – they are in balance within you, so that neither can chase the other out. When the Champion’s form comes upon me, Old Crocodile shifts himself aside. He knows not to contest his kills with such a creature.’

  Maniye found herself baring her teeth at him, because this was her idea, her only idea about what was happening to her and how it might be controlled. ‘I will tell Hesprec. He . . . she will find a way to help me, with this,’ and she was off, running back into the camp and looking for the priest.