by Jocelyn Fox
Chapter 10
Finn knew he was supposed to sleep. They were both supposed to sleep. But Kieran sat at his desk reading a book by the light of a little candle, and Finn sat on the floor, leaning back against the footboard of his bed.
“Tomorrow’s the day,” he said, mostly to himself, mostly to break the silence, but Kieran nodded and sat back in his chair.
“We’ve prepared as well as we knew how,” said Kieran, but it sounded almost like a question to Finn’s ears. He nodded anyway.
“No matter what happens, we won’t quit,” Finn said firmly. “We’ve spent far too long waiting for this. Training for this.”
“Bleeding and sweating for it,” said Kieran in agreement.
Silence wrapped around them again. Finn felt his stomach clench. They tried to eat every few hours, small meals to bolster their strength and build their stores of energy for the trial ahead…but lately bread tasted dry and gritty to Finn, meat tough and gamey, cheese noxiously overpowering. He wondered if Kieran experienced the same but couldn’t find the words to ask.
His mind circled back to the feast of the prior night. The princess had looked so beautiful and had so skillfully turned the conversation back from that dangerous precipice. It was hard to reconcile the genteel princess with the disguised pageboy generously insulting his opponents – Finn had heard the colorful slurs being repeated, half in awe and half in amusement by a few of the pages. He smiled to himself. By Court standards, the princess was still young, though she showed flashes of that seasoned diplomacy now and again. She was younger than Finn, and yet sometimes he felt as though she knew much more than him.
He let his thoughts wander until Kieran finally blew out the candle. There were no windows in their little room, but they both knew that soon the last dawn before their gauntlet would wash the sky in brilliant colors. At the next sunrise, they would be deep in the Queen’s Forest at the mercy of the Knights and Guards.
Or one or both of them could be dead.
Finn shuddered as the thought rose unbidden in his mind. He firmly locked his doubt away as he slid into bed. With an effort, he calmed his thoughts and let his exhaustion usher him into a deep and dreamless sleep.
They slept until noon, a luxury never afforded them in all their years as pages and squires. They dressed and ate silently. A strange combination of excitement, anxiety and dread turned Finn’s stomach and vibrated through his entire body. The day seemed to stretch on forever with no obligations to occupy their attention. Finally, they heard the bells signaling the approach of sunset.
Kieran took a deep breath and faced Finn, pausing at the threshold of their barracks room.
“This will be the last time we cross this threshold as untested squires,” he said.
Finn grinned with a sureness he didn’t feel and gripped Kieran’s arm. “Good Lady willing, brother.”
And with those words, they walked into the passageway and shut the door behind them, their long strides carrying them toward the start of the longest night of their lives.
Chapter 11
The pages’ encampment on the hill outside the western gate hummed with activity. With all the Knights and Guards occupied with the gauntlet, the pages were left to their own devices, and the encampment took on an air of revelry without the watchful eyes of any assistant training master or squires. The squires who hadn’t been put forward for the gauntlet could have imposed some sort of order or training regimen, but most of them weren’t that far removed from their own years as a page, and they kept to their barracks to use their own free time wisely.
Ramel lay back on his cloak and drowsed, staring up at the fading stars and half-dreaming about the day he would follow Knight Balaron into the forest. The night had been uncommonly cold, and a few of the pages had even built a little fire until the night watch – who on this night was a squire who hadn’t been chosen for the gauntlet – had come down out of his tower and kicked dirt over it. Ramel didn’t mind the cold. That was part of who they were, after all. They were a people of the night, and with the night came the cold. He stretched his legs, listening to the murmur of the other pages and letting himself enjoy the strange slowing of time. Moments coalesced about them, an odd stretching of each breath and each heartbeat only emphasizing their youth and their luck at having the night to themselves. Ramel wondered if the slowing of their time was merely a collateral effect of the gauntlet. Perhaps their proximity to the trials of the squires put them in the outer reaches of some enchantment that the Knights and Guards laid on the forest, trapping the pages in the outer currents of their warping of reality.
“Sleeping already?”
Murtagh grinned down at him, his teeth very white in the twilight.
“Not sleeping,” replied Ramel without shifting position or opening his eyes. “Just thinking. Enjoying the free time.”
Murtagh tossed his cloak down on the grass and unfastened the twine on the box he carried; Ramel bolted upright as the delicious scent of meat pies wafted toward him.
“Do the cooks like Walkers better than pages or something?” he asked as he reached for a pie. A few of the other pages looked sharply in their direction, and Murtagh passed the box around generously.
“The cooks like feeding everyone,” replied Murtagh, “but they know that if they overfeed us…or rather, the pages,” he corrected hastily, “Knight Balaron will come roaring down into the kitchens.”
“Ironic, isn’t it,” said Ramel around a mouthful of his second pie. “You finally get all the extra food you could dream up, and you can’t eat all of it for fear of getting fat!”
Murtagh chuckled. “Walker training is still physical sometimes. But yes, you’re mostly right.” He settled back onto his elbows and contemplated the dark latticework of treetops against the soft gray horizon. “Anything interesting yet?”
Ramel shook his head. “A pop of blue smoke near noon, and then a few flashes near sundown, but nothing like last year yet.” He straightened as he realized that he hadn’t told Murtagh about the feast for the Northerners yet. “I served the high dais at the first Solstice feast the other night.”
“That certainly counts as interesting.”
“The Northerners weren’t as…well, savage as I thought they’d be.” Ramel contemplated the last meat pie.
“Who knows how they behave when they’re up in the North,” said Murtagh. “Perhaps they’re just putting on a show of civility.”
“Would savages really care about civility?” mused Ramel.
“Good point.” Murtagh shrugged. “I suppose not.” He folded his legs to sit cross-legged, resting his elbows on his knees. “Their sorceress came to speak to one of the Walkers.”
“The one with the red stripe down her throat,” Ramel said. A shiver trickled down his spine as he remembered the foreign feel of her power heating the air.
“Yes.” Murtagh’s voice turned dreamy. “They call their sorceresses volta. Apparently, most of the time their girl-children inherit the power.”
“A bit like the Bearer,” commented Ramel.
“I never thought of that,” said Murtagh in surprise. “A bit. Perhaps the Northerners and mortals have that in common, some sort of hereditary tendency among the women…”
“None of your scholarly mumbling now!” Ramel elbowed his friend.
“I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not.” Murtagh grinned impishly.
Ramel couldn’t help but smile in response. “You seem a lot happier, now that you’re training to be a Walker.”
Murtagh sighed and his grin faded to a smile. “Yes. When I was a page…I loved certain parts of it, I really did, but it was like…it was like I was constantly off balance. Just enough to keep me from being really good at it.”
“You were pretty good at staffs,” said Ramel.
“Don’t patronize me,” said Murtagh with a laugh. “You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. It’s hard to explain. But when I made that decision to train with the Walkers...it was like I
found this piece of myself that had been missing, and it clicked into place, and suddenly I wasn’t off balance anymore.”
“Well, if you’re going to be a better Walker than a page, you’re going to blow all those soft-bellied boys out of the water,” said Ramel.
Murtagh chuckled. “Glad to know I have your vote of confidence.”
“It’s not a vote of anything, it’s a statement of fact,” said Ramel, laying back and folding his hands behind his head.
Murtagh made a noise that might have indicated agreement or could have been a wordless dissent. They sat in easy silence for what could have been a few moments or could have been an hour, Ramel wasn’t entirely sure. But then Murtagh made another noise and nudged Ramel.
“What?” Ramel said without moving.
“Look.” Awe tinged Murtagh’s voice.
Ramel raised his head and then pushed himself onto an elbow. “What? I don’t see anything.”
“At the edge of the forest,” Murtagh whispered. “There.”
Ramel scanned the edge of the forest, his eyes sliding over the shadowy border between the grassland and the trees. He stiffened as he saw what so transfixed Murtagh. A wolf stood at the edge of the forest, gazing up at the hill and the pages’ encampment.
“There haven’t been wolves in the Queen’s Forest in years,” said Ramel in disbelief. “And it’s massive.”
It was true – the wolf was much larger than their hunting hounds. It moved a few paces through the grass with predatory grace. Ramel watched with wide eyes and wondered suddenly how quickly the wolf would be able to cover the distance between the forest and the hill.
“It’s massive because it’s one of the ulfdrengr wolves,” said a lightly accented woman’s voice, the words sliding from the shadows like velvet brushed against their skin. Ramel turned quickly but even when he looked, he couldn’t find the source of the voice for a long moment. Finally, a slender figure melted out of the darkness. With a start, he recognized one of the twins that had sat at the high dais between Princess Andraste and Knight Arian. She looked younger in the spare light of the fading moon and the new light of day.
“So, my young knights-to-be or knights-that-never-were,” she said, sliding down to crouch by Ramel, “are you afraid of the wolves?” Her pale eyes glinted in the shadows. Ramel knew she was Unseelie, knew she’d been born of Sidhe parents same as him, but in that moment, she looked utterly foreign. He noticed that she even braided her hair like the Northern women.
“That depends,” croaked Ramel past his suddenly dry throat. “Do they have an appetite for pages?”
The woman chuckled. “You were serving at the feast, little page. You wear your chains quite proudly.”
Ramel frowned, but before he could say anything Murtagh pointed.
“Look, there are more,” he breathed.
Three more wolves emerged from the darkness of the forest, none quite so massive as the first that had appeared.
“The one with the silver stripe down her back, that is Radya,” murmured the strange woman, her pale eyes alight as she watched the wolves. “The largest, he is Haldvyk. He is the wolf bonded to the leader of the ulfdrengr. The small dark one, that is Kora, and her mate is the one with the reddish pelt, Malyk.”
“Do you have a wolf?” Murtagh asked.
She laughed softly. “The ulfdrengr do not have wolves. They love them and run with them, they hunt with them and fight to defend them. They die for them.” Her voice shook with emotion. “But they do not have them.” She smiled a bit sadly. “And no, I am not wolf-chosen, though I would gladly pay whatever price to be given the chance.”
“They wouldn’t let you?” Murtagh asked.
The woman hummed, glancing between them. “I thought you would be the one asking all the questions,” she said to Ramel, raising one eyebrow. Then she turned her attention to Ramel. “But it seems I underestimated you, little dream-treader.” She gazed down at the wolves again. “The ulfdrengr must be wolf-chosen as children. They are allowed to stand for selection from their sixth year until their twelfth year. And that is all.”
“Chosen?” Murtagh asked. Ramel could see the curiosity stamped across his friend’s face. “So, it is the wolves who choose the warriors? Do they trade souls?”
“You two look almost like brothers,” said the woman musingly, as though she hadn’t heard Murtagh’s question. “Both with that red glint in your hair. But you,” she gestured at Ramel, “you already have the look of one of the Queen’s servants. They’ve filled your head with tales of heroism, yes?” Her teeth glinted as she smiled wolfishly.
“How long did you stay among the Northerners?” Murtagh asked stubbornly.
“More than a handful of years, and less than I would have liked,” said the woman, her mouth thinning unhappily. She arched an eyebrow at Ramel. “My name is Rye.”
Ramel started guiltily: he had been trying very hard to remember the woman’s name, but his brain had refused to surrender it. “How did you know I was thinking about that?” he demanded.
Rye chuckled. “No Northern sorcery, young knight-to-be, so do not fear.” She tilted her head slightly. “It was written on your face. Though we think we are adept at hiding our thoughts and our feelings, time spent with wolves truly sharpens the senses of perception.”
“Are you going to stay?” Murtagh watched Rye intently.
“Indeed, knight-that-never-was, you have a store of questions,” said Rye. She shifted slightly. “I wish to return North. But I do not think I will be allowed.”
“Allowed? By whom?”
She hissed her breath out between her teeth. “Are you young ones truly so blind?” She shook her head. “Though I cannot expect you to see.”
“We aren’t as young as you think,” retorted Ramel.
“Well then, I shall endeavor to treat you as older than you look,” replied Rye.
The ulfdrengr wolves gathered at the edge of the forest, the smaller three wolves weaving around the largest. Haldvyk, Ramel remembered. It was strange to turn the name of the wolf over in his mind.
“Do the wolves talk to their warriors?” he asked softly, watching as Haldvyk raised his great head and looked up at them. He couldn’t see the wolf’s eyes in the half-dark, but he shivered all the same as though he could feel its gaze on him.
“They don’t talk in the way we think of talking,” replied Rye softly. All three of them looked down at the forest and the sinuous flow of the wolves around their leader. “Not with words. But there’s…there’s a connection there. It’s difficult to explain. I still don’t fully understand it myself.”
They sat in a strange companionable silence for a long moment. Finally, Haldvyk turned and led the other three wolves back into the forest, melting silently into the shadows. Ramel felt an odd sense of loss pierce his chest, as though he’d never seen anything so powerful and beautiful as those wolves and he wouldn’t again for a long while.
“What is it you think we don’t see?” he asked Rye, looking over at the slender woman. She turned her head and met his gaze, the force of her pale eyes physically jarring.
“Do you really want me to answer that question, young knight-to-be?” Rye waited unblinkingly for his answer.
“I wouldn’t have asked the question if I didn’t want you to answer,” he replied lightly with a bit of a grin.
“You’re certainly a charming little thing,” she murmured, raising one eyebrow.
Ramel felt his face heat, though he didn’t really know why.
Rye hummed to herself again. “Well. I shall tell you then.” She kept her unnerving gaze on Ramel. “You wear your chains willingly, but someday you may notice their weight. Someday you may want to run free. And here, we are not truly free.”
Ramel frowned slightly. “What exactly do you mean by ‘free?’”
She chuckled. “Oh, what do I mean by free?” She shook her head, dark braids falling over her shoulder as she leaned closer to Ramel. He stared at her and found it h
arder to breathe. Her words slid sinuously through the air and twined around him. “Your freedom is an illusion, young knight-to-be. Yes, you have chosen a path in which you give it up willingly, placing yourself in the service of the one who calls herself queen.”
Ramel heard Murtagh’s sharp intake of breath, but he couldn’t look away from Rye’s face. The intensity of her belief in her words rendered her eyes mesmerizing, her white teeth cutting through her words even as her sensual mouth shaped them. She leaned further toward him, placing one hand on the earth, one knee on the ground, her pose vaguely lupine, like a hound scenting the wind.
“Are you truly free if you cannot leave? Are you truly free if your very soul belongs to another who calls herself queen and could extinguish your life with a flick of her wrist?”
“This is bordering on treachery,” whispered Murtagh.
Ramel swallowed and waited for Rye to continue.
“If I wish to leave this place and journey North to make my home among the ulfdrengr and the volta forever, who is to stop me?” Rye’s eyes flashed with a terrible anger. “If I do not wish to bend the knee to another, who is to make me?”
