Wolf Hunting

by Jane Lindskold

  "That's it!" Derian said, and for once Firekeeper could not blame him for stating the obvious. She wanted to romp and howl as wolves did when catching a fresh scent, but kept her dignity.

  "Can you tell us more about the people who made this claim," Harjeedian asked, "and how we might find them?"

  Layo folded her hands in her lap. "I can tell you about them, but I am not sure I can tell you how to find them. You see, a year or more ago, they left the city. Why they left is part of the larger story."

  "It always is," Firekeeper grumbled to Blind Seer, but aloud she said, "Do they live?"

  "As far as I know they do," Layo answered. "There were only two who made the claim, a brother and a sister, twins born at the same moment. You may think this is impossible. Certainly one must come forth first, but in their case, the impossible was possible. They were joined side of hand to side of hand, as if they had pressed too close in the womb and their skin had woven together."

  She paused as if expecting questions, but the only words that came were Derian's polite "Please go on. This is fascinating."

  "The surgeon was summoned, and they were cut apart immediately, for it was reasoned that young flesh would heal more quickly than if there was a delay. There was also a fear that once out in the great, wide world they might do injury to each other. The surgery was successful. By their first year, no mark of it remained but for a thin, silvery white scar.

  "However, soon those who cared for the babies could tell that the twins remained somehow joined, although their bodies had been parted. When one stumbled and fell, the other cried, even if they were in separate rooms, or even in separate parts of the city. They were happy together, miserable together, ill together, hungry together - and this persisted even after their weary mother sent the brother for a time into the country with his father, and kept the sister in the city with her.

  "Theirs was a small family, not so ambitious that either member was much noticed by their clan. Do you know anything of our system of representatives?"

  Harjeedian spoke for them all. "Aridisdu Amiri explained that each clan has a representative, and these form a senate."

  "Accurate but not quite fully so," Layo said. "Doubtless she wished to keep her explanation simple, for how could she know it would matter?"

  "If you would explain further," Harjeedian said, "at least those points that pertain to the matter at hand, we would all be grateful."

  "Certainly," Layo replied. "Each clan is granted a certain number of senatorial representatives based upon the clan's own size. Size is not measured by mere numbers of people, but by families - and a family is defined as a married couple that has produced at least one child. When the couple marries, which clan they will augment is carefully negotiated, and if a divorce occurs, the parent who is born to that clan keeps the children and they remain part of the clan. The other parent is returned to his or her birth clan and resumes a child's status unless he or she remarries."

  Firekeeper knew Derian well enough to know that he wished to ask a question, but had decided it was not to the point at hand. Layo, surprisingly, for Derian had hidden his interest very well, also noticed.

  "You have a question, Counselor Derian?"

  "Oh, it's probably not important I was thinking that remarriage after one has been married and divorced! - especially if you're the one who keeps the children - must be complicated."

  "It is," Layo said. "Usually the second marriage partner must agree to join the same clan as the spouse and children, although there are exceptions."

  Derian grinned. "I'm sure there are. Whenever someone sets up what seems like a perfectly orderly way of doing things, someone else will find a way to mess it up. But please, go on with the story of these twins."

  Layo nodded. "As I said, the twins' family belonged to a clan well enough placed that one family more or less did not make a great difference. This was the mother's clan, by the way. The father came from outside Gak entirely, a first-generation immigrant. As neither parent had any great desire to join into the political game, the years passed in benign neglect from the clan as a whole.

  "The twins grew older. With age, their peculiar bond became more and more obvious. The bond of shared physical sensation decreased, but still each knew more about the other than was reasonable. There was gossip as to who would wish to marry either one. Who would wish to feel that the intimacies of their household were known by another?

  "So it rested until a few years ago when the twins' mother died during the usual bout of winter ills. The twins' father dealt with his loss by disconnecting himself from his wife's family as much as possible. As I mentioned, he was a first-generation immigrant - or so we thought Now he told his children the true story of his heritage. His family had old roots in this region, very old roots, right back to the Old World rulers themselves.

  "He filled the twins' heads with stories of the power and influence his family had held. He also shared his indignation that his family, as old as any clan and older still, had no place within the representative system. It is my belief that he intended to raise the issue before the senate himself, for now that his wife - who by all reports he truly loved - was dead, there was no real reason for him to wish to remain connected to her birth clan."

  Derian gave a humorless laugh. "I guess not if he thought he could found his own clan. But you say you believe 'he intended' to raise the issue of his family's heritage himself. Didn't he do so?"

  "No, he didn't for the simple reason that he died before he could do so - an infection in a cut to his leg spread. The leg was amputated, but not soon enough. The poison was in his blood and killed him."

  "And the twins?" Firekeeper asked, concerned that there would be a round of discussion of similar deaths. Humans were fond of such talking, as if comparison made the one incident somehow more explicable. "What they do? "

  "They inherited a house in town, a section of farmland outside the walls, and their father's belief that they should be the founders - or rather the reestablishers - of a clan of their own. I will say this for them. They gave a very good presentation. They had inherited some old documents and pieces of jewelry that supported their father's tales. These they bolstered with materials located in private libraries and the city's own archives. However, their request was denied. The official reason was that the government of Gak was established by those who remained to defend and sustain the nation at a time of crisis."

  Harieedian's expression held a cynical cast as he spoke. "But I am certain that another, unstated reason was that the senate was not at all pleased with the idea of needing to incorporate a new voting bloc - no matter how small that might have been initially. It would still have been one more vote, an unaligned vote at that. Depending on how prolific this brother and sister proved to be, and how good they were at negotiating marriages for themselves and their offspring, they might prove a clan to contend with in a relatively short period of time."

  "Precisely," Layo said. "I will not trouble you by reciting the increments at which a clan may claim the right to instate a new voting representative, but given the twins' relative youth, by the time their heads were silvering, they might command a very solid voting bloc."

  Firekeeper noticed that Derian was fidgeting, and now he blurted out:

  "And was no one troubled by the fact that these twins claimed Old World sorcerers as ancestors?"

  XII

  SORCERERS?" LAYO REPEATED, evidently puzzled. "You said they claimed to be descended from the Old World rulers," Derian said, realizing that she had actually not stated that the twins' ancestors were sorcerers. Had he jumped to a conclusion too quickly?

  "That's what the twins claimed," Layo agreed. "However, the twins' ancestors had not maintained their holdings, and thus it was judged that they had relinquished claim of citizenship in our rebuilt nation."

  "Now," Derian said carefully, "the twins ancestors fled because..."

  "The twins did not mention," Layo said. "They probably had no idea."
/>   "In our country," Derian said, "the Plague was more severe in its effects among those who had come from the Old Country. Was that true here as well?"

  "So the legends say," Layo said. "That is why there was suddenly a dearth of rulers and we had to reorganize."

  "Did your Old Country rulers use magic and sorcery to keep their hold?" Derian asked. "That's what they did in the norm."

  "Here as well," Layo agreed. "How else could a relative few have ruled the growing colonies? It was the very abuse of those powers that brought Divine Retribution upon them. Even those of my fellow citizens who do not share my precise beliefs say something of the kind. The Old Country rulers abused their power, and so were punished for that abuse."

  Firekeeper shifted slightly, moving closer to Blind Seer. Like Derian, she had been reared to view magic as very dangerous. Moreover, Derian didn't doubt that she was already ahead of him on this road down which he was slowly leading Layo.

  "When the twins said that they were descended from Old Country rulers," Derian said, "you did say they provided proof."

  "That's right Papers. Jewelry. A family genealogy. Their hither had been raised in one of the city-states on the eastern seaboard. His learning of his heritage upon the death of his own parents led to him coming west, meeting the twins' mother, and settling down. She may have convinced him not to pursue the matter, because he seems to have left it lie until after her death."

  "Rulers," Derian repeated, "not just household staff or trusted retainers or some such that might have left along with their employers."

  "Rulers," Layo said. "The emblem you showed me was their crest It stood for something like 'Land of the Setting Sun.' That is, it indicated that they held a far western portion of the colony."

  "Not fire?" Firekeeper asked, and Derian couldn't tell if he read relief or disappointment in her tone. "It look like fire."

  "It does," Layo agreed, "but the reason the flames are spaced out like that is because the general shape is meant to represent a cluster of mountains. The ragged flame edge is the color those particular mountains turn when the sun is setting."

  "Layo," Derian said very carefully, not wanting to offend this woman who had been, after all, very patient with them. "It seems to me that your representative's concentration on the political ramifications of the twins' request meant that they overlooked something that seems more serious to me - the fact that the twins were also claiming to be descended from sorcerers."

  "You said that before," Layo agreed, "and I can see why, but what does it matter? We rose up against the sorcerers, destroyed what they left behind. In any case, the art of sorcery was only taught in the Old World, never here."

  "So it was in the north as well," Derian said, "but that doesn't mean that there haven't been things - books, a few artifacts, perhaps other things - that were missed."

  Layo was looking very unhappy now, but Derian was optimistic that her emotion was not directed toward him.

  "And the twins are very strange," she said. "Some have said their closeness is along the order of a talent - like a gift for healing or a perfect sense of direction - only much more rare. Do you think they may have inherited more than just bits of jewelry and a particularly detailed family tree?"

  "Quite possibly," Derian said.

  Harjeedian had waited in perfect silence to tins point, nodding occasionally to agree with Derian where appropriate, but otherwise not doing anything to press Layo to accept Derian's conclusion. Derian thought he knew why. Harjeedian was very aware of his dual position as informal ambassador and visiting religious authority. He would not wish Layo to feel afterward that she had been forced to a conclusion she would never have reached on her own.

  Now, however, Harjeedian evidently felt he could take a more active role.

  "So you can see why it is important that we meet these ns," he said. "Can you direct us to them, and perhaps 've us an idea how best to approach them?" Layo spread her hands in what Derian thought might be a universal gesture of dismay. "I wish I could," she said, "but they left Gak over a year ago. They sold all their holdings, bought horses and her traveling equipment, and departed. No one has seen or heard from them since."

  PLIK TOOK A VERY FINE-TOOTHED COMB and irked the dead fleas from his fur. That was one advantage of being a maimalodalu, rather than a true racoon. He could deal with fleas. He wondered why his mother never realized the advantages, but then she had never minded fleas.

  Plik had known when the others returned from meeting with Layo, the former senator, in the early afternoon, that they had not been completely successful. He had sensed at they had not been entirely unsuccessful either. Now he listened and learned the details.

  When they finished speaking and the last question was answered, the last speculation made, Plik set aside his comb. His fur smelled good, clean, impregnated with herbal infusion he had used to kill the fleas. He wondered why the wolf and jaguar chose to sit upwind.

  "So they are gone," Plik said, "but we now know where they once were. In a sense, for me first time since we have begun this journey we know for certain that they exist. The twins. Tell me, what are their personal names?"

  "Isende and Tiniel," Derian replied. 'Tiniel is the male."

  "The names don't sound Liglimosh," Plik said.

  "They are not," Harjeedian said. "Layo did not know their precise source, but she recalled that the father named them. He apparently felt that if they were to be of their mother's clan - he himself not having one - he should at least give them their names."

  Derian looked at Plik. "I've been meaning to ask you. Your name, it doesn't sound much like the type of names the maimalodalum have. I mean, the ones I've met"

  "You mean like 'Hope' or 'Powerful Tenderness' or some such abstract quality?" Plik asked, wondering if his discomfort showed on his face. He was not yet sure how much of his expressions came through to the humans.

  "That's right," Derian said. "But, like I said, it's not like I've met them all. I mean, it's not like my name means anything. It's just one of those Old World names we still keep using. I guess it means something, or did once a long time ago. In my family, though, it's just the name of someone in the family who died young."

  Plik was certain his discomfort had come through, and Derian was giving him a way out. All Plik had to do was start talking about ancestor worship or memory or some such dung, and the question of Plik's own name would be dropped. Moreover, Plik knew that Derian would never raise the matter again, no one would.

  He opened his mourn to ask the source of Derian's name, but he heard himself saying instead, "You're right Plik isn't the name I was given at birth. My mother called me 'Misbegotten.' Plik is the sound water makes when a single drop falls onto rock. I liked that better."

  Derian reached out a hand, as if he might somehow take back his question.

  "Plik, I'm sorry... I..."

  Plik patted the big, pink-skinned hand.

  "It was a long, long time ago," he said, "before your own mother was born. We have more important matters to discuss."

  Firekeeper, who had been silent during all the telling and speculation, spoke for the first time.

  "What? The twins are gone. We will track them or not If you have a story, tell."

  Plik blinked at her and switched to the language of the Beasts, "And if I do not wish to tell?"

  "Then don't," the wolf-woman said, "but your fur bristles with old memories. I thought telling might ease you."

  Plik switched back. "I will tell the story, perhaps, someday. Now we need to make our plans. There are some hours of daylight left. Do we strike camp and hit the trail?"

  "To where?" Firekeeper said. "The twins have gone. Truth say she have no thought where next to go. Do we go back then?"

  The wolf-woman looked to where the jaguar lay on her heap of pillows, but though the great cat's burnt-orange eyes narrowed slightly, Truth made no other reply.

  Plik shook his head. "We should definitely not go back. It seems to me that t
he tale Layo has told you fits all too well with the pattern you told us has occurred before. Like Melina, like Dantarahma, these twins also were attracted to magic. Whether they were lured into thus attraction or whether the Voice - or whoever it was who carved those figurines - was drawn to that attraction and somehow used it still, we should feel encouraged rather than otherwise."

  Plik had everyone's attention now, and continued with increased enthusiasm. "And we have an indication where they might have gone. The emblem indicated that their father's family originally held lands to the far west. Where else would they have gone when their appeal was rejected?"

  Derian, who had slumped back against a heap of pillows when he had realized his idle question had brought Plik pain, now straightened.

  "You have a good thought there, Plik."

  "West is large," Firekeeper said, but her words were not a rejection of Plik's conjecture, only something like an initial sniffing. "Very. But humans know little of it."

  "We will go looking," said Bitter the raven, spreading his wings as if he might take flight that very moment.

  "Wait," Plik said. "A little research on the part of our human friends may limit your search. Harjeedian must do it mostly, I fear, and even he may need assistance from the locals if the archives are written in some other language than those he reads."

  "I will inquire immediately," Harjeedian said, getting up from the camp chair where he had been sitting. "I will see if there is any record where the father's family holdings were - the family that held the grant in the land of the Setting Sun."

  Plik nodded. "It may be easier to find than you imagine. Wouldn't such records have been sought at the time of the senate hearing?"

  "Very likely," Harjeedian agreed.

  "I wish I could help," Plik said, "but as I have promised my people to keep our existence a secret..."

  "I understand," Harjeedian said.