XII
AN UNFORGOTTEN DEBT
I
Riding on a giant wolf was a terrifying experience, even once the incredulity of the method of transportation had worn off. Thackery hadn’t covered himself properly and could feel the sun searing his skin through the ventilated rags he wore, though he had not the slightest occasion to adjust his garments or fashion himself an Arhad-style wrap. All he could do was grip tightly and bury his head. Most of the time, he didn’t open his eyes, as the golden smears of landscape he was treated to only disoriented him further. Thackery had no idea how long they bounded over the dunes, though his arms certainly had an opinion on how much longer they would assist him in holding on. Just as the pins and needles in his scrawny limbs turned to spasms of pain, the Wolf-carriage suddenly growled to a halt. The Wolf stood up on his hinds and shook its back free of its troublesome cargo. Thackery yelped as he landed on the ground. It was a softer landing than he had anticipated, and as he opened his eyes and let the black fog clear, he saw that the Wolf had brought them to an oasis.
Enticing them with shade were ferns and tall trees with peeling bark and wide fanning leaves, and across the grass, two boulders glistened in a sandy pool. The waters instantly sang to Thackery’s cracking mouth, and he crawled toward them, shouldering off Caenith’s pack. Soon he was up to his knees, refreshing and washing himself as gaily as a beggar in a King’s Crown fountain. Caenith was along in a moment, wearing the skin of a man; he drank on all fours and then splashed his large hands and feet. Most of the ash had blown out of his hair, and it could have been his nakedness or primal masculinity, but he seemed as beastly in this as in his other skin to Thackery.
“I have read much, and seen even more. But I do not know what to call you,” said the sage.
“A Wolf,” grunted Caenith. “A changeling. A skin-walker. We have many names in many realms.”
“Changeling.” Thackery froze and played with the word, digging in his head for meaning and history. Not much came to him, except a faery story. One where a woman wed a fisherman, but could only be with him during the day. Come the starry hourglasses, she disappeared. Because she was so beautiful and caring, with the deepest brown eyes the fisherman had ever seen, he indulged in her eccentricity. Until one day, the fisherman’s curiosity transformed into jealousy that she was being unfaithful to him, and he tracked her as she left their cabin and tiptoed to the beach. He could not believe what he saw there, as she dug out a leathery cloak, slung it over herself, and then dove into the sea. All night he waited and watched, and at dawn not his betrothed but a silky, deep-eyed seal returned to the shore.
He screamed when he saw her split from her skin, as a babe being passed from her mother, though his cry was more from shock than terror. When Dymphana knew that her secret was broken, she grabbed her cloak of skin, dove into the shores of Ban Loch, and was never seen again. Though often while the fisherman, who never took another wife, was on his boat in the White Lake, he would see on the horizon a lonely rock and a dark shape staring at him. But if he paddled toward it, the shape would disappear into the deeps. For he had seen Dymphana’s greatest shame: the animal that hid inside her, and for that, she could never face her love again.
“Dymphana,” muttered Thackery.
“And her seal pups, yes. They are the most famous of our kind. That tale is old, though, and not as romantic as what you might have heard. For the fisherman knew what she was, and hunted her on the beach as she sunned her breasts. He stole her skin and threatened to burn her hide if she would not submit to him, and then raped her for many seasons. One day, one of her three dark-haired children discovered a bundle of leathers that their father kept hidden in the rafters. She trimmed her skin and gave a piece to each child, and then took the children to the White Lake. When the fisherman returned, he was furious that she had escaped, and he pursued her. However, Dymphana had learned her lesson, as well as taking a few from man on cruelty, and she and her children swam to the choppiest waters of the lake and sang for the fisherman to hear. He harked to the cry, and his rage drove him onward. His vessel could not survive the voyage, and he died watching Dymphana and his children laughing at him.”
Caenith threw back his wet hair and scoured Thackery with his cold stare. “The fisherman—whom we deign not to remember or honor with a name—was the one who brought malice to our people. His is a cursed tale to tell our cubs and pups. To warn them of man’s desire to corrupt and break the Will of the Green Mother and her children.”
“Quite different from what is said in the West,” Thackery said, frowning. “I thought those were faery stories. As a learned man, I had not considered that they might be true.”
“I tell nothing but, element-breaker,” said Caenith candidly, and waded into the water to splash his groin. “Your kind is just as hated among the tribes of the West.”
Embarrassment made Thackery look away. “My kind?”
“Element-breakers, skyrapers, earthbeaters, we have many names for men with your gifts.”
“Sorcery is an Art,” contended Thackery, coming out of the water. “An expression of emotion, just like painting, sculpture, or poetry. In fact, I’d say it’s closer to the latter, a virtuosity of feeling paired with a monk’s sense of control. Do you know what mastery and discipline it takes to feel so profoundly that your emotion can shape the world? Feel too strongly or without enough control, and the simplest of spells can unmake a man. Feel strongly and truly, and love—or hate—can become a glorious manifestation. We are the poets of Geadhain.”
Thackery tore off the lower part of his tattered robe and fashioned himself an Arhad-style hood. He had assumed that the Wolf had let the issue lie until his mocking voice boomed, almost laughing.
“How highly you regard yourself. Hubris has always been a quality of your kind. What would you call a farmer who does not use the fertile spring to nourish his soil and plant what is to bloom, but only moves from field to field, stripping harvests? Or the shepherd who slays his flock to feed his fat self, and when their bones are clean, finds another hill and more frightened ewes to feed upon? Sorcerers,” Caenith growled, “are what reap and never sow. That is why the Green Mother denies them their art—as you would call it—in Alabion. We of the East understand the sacrifice that every creation brings, magikal or otherwise. There is a scale. A balance to be maintained. For every act, a sacrifice. For every spell, a cost. That is the seed and water for the harvest. That is the proper order of magik. Not take, take, take, for which the magik-men of the West are famous. Eod’s king is perhaps the only one I know of to ask, and not command life to do his bidding. There is a difference, son of Thule. There is a difference.”
Thackery couldn’t muster up a rebuttal to the Wolf’s defamation of his craft. Whirling thoughts consumed him, anyway. Confusion and intrigue over the Wolf’s strange lecture had him questioning the theories to which he and every other sorcerer adhered. Takers? he wondered. Could there really be another way? Leaving him to his uncertainty, the Wolf splashed out of the pool and was shortly back in Thackery’s company bearing in each hand a furry brown fruit, as large as the skin balls with which boys made sport. The hard-shelled spheres might as well have been quail eggs, the way the Wolf punctured and cracked them with his thumbs, though their insides were not yolky, but filled with white meat and milk. The Wolf offered one to Thackery and then broke open another for himself. They squatted and ate like a couple of cave savages. The Wolf was as messy as Thackery expected, though he never found himself debating what Morigan found attractive about him, as his barbarity was so natural as to be charming.
“It is good that I had the foresight to bring you some clothing. You will have to wear it eventually,” mentioned Thackery.
“It is good that I have a mule to carry it, then.”
If this was a joke, it was said without a smile. The Wolf wiped his beard of milk; he had eaten the husk of the fruit, as well. “You have an hourglass to sleep. Some shade under the trees will do yo
u well, and that meal should give you enough strength to hang on until we stop again.”
“What about you?”
“I shall rest when Morigan is found,” declared the Wolf.
His expression was so grim and frightening that Thackery did not inquire again. He hurried off to a nest of dry grass under the fanning trees and was asleep as soon as he shut his eyes. What felt like an instant later, he was being shaken awake by Caenith, who threw the pack of his belongings at him. He caught it with an oomph and tried to will his stiff and torn limbs to move, though they were as good as lead bones with throbbing joints of brittle, grinding glass. He could easily say that he had never been so sore in all his life.
How will I do this? How can I hold on? he thought bleakly. Because you must. No matter the cost to this body, you must see that Morigan is found. If that is to be your final act in this life, so be it. At least it will be a noble one. Now move, old man.
Using the tree as a cane, Thackery staggered up. He gave pause at the Wolf’s gruesome transformation, nearly fainting from either the heat or his surprise at a sight to which he believed he would never be accustomed. Once the snapping, furring, and rearranging of flesh was complete, the Wolf pounded his way. Thackery put on the pack, shakily climbed aboard his mount, and clung his aching body to the muscled hide like a spider. His bladder complained, and he swore at not having tended to that need sooner, for they were off, and the oasis was gone in a blink. Either their movement was faster or Thackery was weaker, for their passage seemed twice as hard as their first ride together. His fingers were hooked, trembling, and felt as if they might break off as crisply as winter twigs; every ripple of the Wolf’s body coursed bolts of pain into his chest and rattled his teeth. Hold on, hold on, hold on, chanted Thackery, and between the heat, the dulling wind in his ears, and the agony of his every part, he slipped into a state of numbness and delirium.
Tirelessly, the Wolf raced the sands, faster than a mare would, if not as fast as a skycarriage. When the panting beast finally lumbered to a trot, the desert had been embraced by a cool evening. Thackery whimpered as he turned his neck and feared that the fire in his limbs had left him paralyzed. Stars spun around him, in the sky or in his head, and one of the Wolf’s shoulders dipped, worsening the effect. While this was an attempt at a gentle dislodging, the ground struck Thackery as sharply as a bed of knives. In utter discomfort, for many sands, Thackery lay without moving but for his quivering lips. He could tell by the disappearance of musk and heat that the Wolf had left him. How quickly then did the chill hands of Kor’Khul creep into his flesh. As the shivering intensified, he jittered to life, and groaned himself to his feet. Pain shot through his every nerve, locking his toes and fingers, and when the head sparks and vertigo calmed, he took a look at where he was.
Around him rose a canyon, grooved in wavy ripples by the water that had once flowed through the desert. They weren’t in a mountain, as far as he could discern, for sand banked the tops of the stone walls, and whisking trails led upward into the dunes. On the bed of this dry river, the Wolf had laid him, and he could see large pawprints leading out of the canyon. He refused to despair and believe that he had been abandoned, and attempted to collect himself a bit. He started with a pee that sizzled and went on for sands, and then had a hobble about. There wasn’t much in the way of sights or sounds other than the echo of desolation, so he circled a small area he had claimed for himself and tried to count the stars instead of heeding his hunger, thirst, or the burning of his heels with every step.
Falling apart…I’m falling apart, and this journey has only begun. A two-hundred-year-old man who takes up the life of a brigand! Ha! Better get your mind in order, old man. This won’t be the hardest thing you’ll face in the days or weeks or months ahead. The reality sank over him then, of the breadth of the peril and travel to which he had committed. He remembered telling himself earlier that Morigan’s rescue could claim him. He was rather sure it would, and he didn’t need the young witch’s silver eyes to foretell that future. It’s all in how you look at it. Dying alone in a tower, perhaps in some embarrassing way, as the old tend to go: dead on a toilet or with a crust of bread hanging out of my mouth. Or on a grand adventure. I thought I was too old to have a child’s sense of daring, but aren’t we all just children in the end? The time we play as adults is mostly for show. I shall enjoy this, then, if I can. My last great journey.
“Meat,” said Caenith from behind him.
He was so pleasantly contemplating his end that the pain had dimmed and he had not sensed Caenith’s regression to man or approach. He turned to a grisly if not altogether unsurprising sight of Caenith’s naked flesh bibbed in crimson. The Wolf lofted up a lizardy corpse about the size of a hound, which Thackery recognized as a spinrex; he didn’t ask where the rest of the herd was—in Caenith’s belly, he presumed. Caenith handed him the lizard, and Thackery held it as one does with raw dead things, unsure of what he was to do.
“No water. Drink the blood and eat what meat you can. We move again in a few hourglasses,” said Caenith, squatting on his haunches and surveying the canyon, the stars, and the desert with his twitching senses. Without any further instruction to go on, Thackery unslung his pack, retrieved the dagger within it, and then joined Caenith on the ground and tried to figure out the intricacies of the art of meat carving. Many stumbles with a blade later, Caenith took the messy carcass from him quite rudely and fileted the spinrex as deftly as a mariner gutting a fish, with painterly strokes that removed skin from flesh from bone in the passing of a sand. Caenith placed the juicy hunks of flesh on a bed of scaly membranes that resembled a gory salad. He then popped the organs into his mouth, slurped up the entrails, and tossed the bones, finishing with a red smile.
“Eat,” commanded Caenith.
Thackery swallowed. How rustic. An adventure, remember? Embracing that adventurousness, Thackery consumed the rubbery chunks quickly. He tried to think of the oddly salty liquid as a fluid other than blood. The Wolf was wise, however, for the barbaric meal was as hydrating as it was nourishing, and it sat in his stomach with the fullness of porridge. That would sustain him for a time. The Wolf’s dangling nakedness was making him uncomfortable, so he looked up to see unfamiliar stars.
“How far have we come?” wondered Thackery.
“About half of Kor’Khul,” grunted the Wolf. “Another day and night and we should clear it. Morigan’s captors are ahead of us, but not by much. Perhaps…perhaps she will awaken, or I shall feel her warmth in me again before then.”
“Her warmth?”
“We are connected, she and I. In ways that you could never imagine. She is what I have hunted my whole long life for.”
Lately, Thackery’s imagination was being tested, stretched, and reassembled, and he could have guessed with relative accuracy at what strangeness united the Wolf and Morigan. Were he to draw parallels between what he knew—the king and queen’s relationship was the most obvious, as incredible as it was—he felt that Morigan and the Wolf’s bond ran deeper. Deeper than a love that has lasted one thousand years? Do you really believe that? He did. When he had been at the Fuilimean, he had even read a twist of jealously on Lila’s golden self that told him this was true. We shall find her, Caenith, he promised. Glancing over to the Wolf, he saw the man sunken a little in his shoulders and majesty, and sought to change the subject.
“I would not question your skills as a tracker, but I am curious as to what road you mean to take to Menos. Past the deserts of Kor’Khul are the lordships of Blackmore, the fields of Canterbury, and the Iron Valley that precedes the Black City, though to get anywhere in the East, we shall have to cross the River Feordhan, which not even you could paw your way across with respectable speed.”
Caenith looked over, scowling. With the animal in control, he had not given honest thought to the sensibilities of their travel, and it had been centuries since he crossed to the West. Remembering wasn’t easy for him. “I took a boat last time. Landed at Taroch’s�
��Taroch’s…”
“Arm,” finished Thackery. “Taroch’s Arm is still where one catches a ferry, which takes a man to any number of docks in the East. We’ll want Blackforge, city of house Blackmore. We’re in a hurry, which is good, because we don’t want to stay in either port for a moment more than we have to. I don’t know what you recall, but as the bridge between East and West, those are two of the most dangerous cities in which a man can find himself. And while the Blackmore claim neutrality, they are thoroughly in the pocket of Menos, so we’d best not draw attention to ourselves. You will be needing your clothes once we get to Taroch’s Arm, and tempting as it might be to wolf around the countryside after that, it is ill-advised, as Menosian Crowes patrol the skies and have instruments specifically alerted by signs of unusual movement. We shall have to proceed on foot.”
“We can’t afford the delay!” growled Caenith, slapping his hands on the ground.
“Would you risk our own capture? We’ll be no good to Morigan then.”
“I shall never be chained,” declared the Wolf defiantly.
Thackery pursed his lips. “I would imagine every prisoner has said that before.”
The Wolf calmed his pride. “What do you propose, son of Thule?”
Do stop calling me that, and I shall ignore your complete incivility in most instances, like your balls dragging themselves in the sand. Can’t you feel that, you brute? Do you even care? Thackery thought, but managed to answer with decency.
“I have some bonds that I can call upon in Taroch’s Arm from some fellows or their descendants, if I’ve outlived the debtor.” Thackery waved away the thought. “We’ll get to that when we get to it. Regardless, the bonds should certainly provide enough coin for the travel, and we can smuggle our way close to Menos on a caravan headed for the Iron City. That’s the best I can think of for a plan.”
Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Page 34
