The War of the Lance t2-3

by Margaret Weis

  There were reasons for that, the kind Roulant dared not think about here and alone in the dark forest.

  Wind soughed low, herding fallen leaves. All around, the night drew in close, dark and sighing. Roulant stopped for breath before he began to climb the last stony path, the barely seen trace that would lead him to the ruin. Watching his breath plume in the frosty air, he thought that the pale mist was just like the promises he'd made to Thorne — easily blown away.

  And Roulant knew that if he failed again tonight, he'd be forced to break a different promise, one that had nothing to do with wolves and curses. If he didn't kill the wolf tonight, in the morning he would go to Una and tell her that he couldn't marry her. He would do that, though both their hearts would break.

  A dear and pretty girl, his Una, with her earnest green eyes and her red-gold hair. He was no poet, but late at night Roulant liked to watch the fire in the hearth and think that the rosy flames, so lovely and generous with their warmth, reminded him of Una. Whatever joy would come on their wedding day would be swiftly overshadowed by his terrible obligation to go up to the ruin year after year, trying, as his father had tried, to bring an end to the Night of the Wolf. How could Roulant come back to Una every year, with blood on his hands as surely as it was on Thorne's?

  And yet… how could he bear to look down the long years of a life without her?

  Roulant put his back into the last climb and soon left the dark fastness of the forest to see Thorne and Guarinn waiting in the paler light of the clearing. The moons were rising, mere suggestions of light above the mountain. Soon they would spill red and silver light on the bald hill crowned by frost-whitened, shattered walls. Roulant left the forest, trying to shut out the grim sense that the events of this Night were fated.

  From the obscuring dark at the forest's edge, Una watched him join his friends. Once Roulant and Thorne and Guarinn climbed the hill to the ruin, Una went noiselessly around the base, up the slope as silently as a shadow, and entered at the opposite side to hide in the small shelter of blackened beams and piled stone that once had shaped a bridal chamber.

  Thorne stood in the center of the ruin, surrounded by the broken stone, his back to the rising moons. He lifted his head, sniffed the air. Guarinn tied a slipknot around one end of the rope he'd carried. Roulant strung his bow and placed three arrows in easy reach on the flat of a broken stone.

  "Time, my friend," the dwarf said, his forge-scarred hands shaking a little, though he gripped the rope hard. They'd tried to hold Thorne with rope before, five years ago. It was Tam who had stood readying bow and bolt then, not Roulant. Guarinn thought it might be different this time with a younger eye, a steadier hand to take a well-timed shot at the instant of changing. Thorne closed his eyes, shut out the sight of the rope that would hold him, of Roulant readying a long, steel-headed shaft for flight, and nodded to Guarinn.

  "Do it, and hurry."

  When the noose passed over his head and settled on his neck, Thorne heard himself panting hoarsely, like an anxious beast mindlessly straining for release. The rope stank of hemp and tar and the dark scent of smoke, fire's ghost. In moments, like the return of an unhealed malady, he'd feel the bonds of humanity fall away from him: compassion replaced by hunger, an imperative that knew no mercy. Reason and skill changed by fast, fevered degrees to instinct, which existed only to serve the needs of survival. Even now, his senses filled with the complex richness of scent only an animal knows. Even now the scents aroused hunger.

  The man knew the fear he smelled on Guarinn as welljustified, not to be scorned. The wolf would only smell the fear and know instinctively that this was a victim to feed hunger. Thorne wished that Guarinn would hurry, for very soon Thorne Shape-shifter, once known for his mastery of this most difficult of the magic arts, would not be able to hold back the changing.

  Crouched in her cold dark shelter, Una stared in amazed alarm to see Guarinn place the noose round Thorne's neck. Like most people in Dimmin, she felt like an intruder in Guarinn's company, his glum silences made her a stranger to be kept at arm's length, mistrusted. But she knew that Roulant loved Guarinn as truly as he loved Thorne and had loved his own father. Though she'd heard Thorne invite the binding, saw Roulant standing by in silence, Una watched the dwarf with narrowed eyes.

  Each knot he tied was strong, and as he worked, Guarinn's face was like a stark, bleak landscape, scoured by sorrow, forsaken of all but the thinnest hope. Yet he did the rough work carefully and, were it anyone else, Una would have said tenderly. He took great care to cause no hurt, and watching, unable to find any reason for what she was seeing, Una swallowed hard against an ache of tears. Tears for Thorne, bound; for Roulant, who stood as still as the mage, watching. And for Guarinn Hammerfell who, of them all, looked as if he alone hated what was being done.

  And she wondered, what WAS being done? And why? From the forest Una heard the clap of an owl's wings; hard on that, the faint, dying scream of a small creature caught in dagger-sharp talons. The wind stirred, cold from behind her as a long, low moaning slid across the night. An uncanny sound, a grievous pleading.

  Trembling, with cold fear, she saw Roulant pick up an arrow, nock it to the bowstring, his stance the broad one of a man preparing to put an arrow right through a straw-butt at the bull's-eye. Guarinn moved to the side, moonlight running on the bitter edge of the throwing axe in his hand.

  The mage, alone, wearing the light of the moons like a shimmering cloak of red and silver, sank to his knees. Guarinn took two more quick paces to the side, careful not to get between the mage and the wall. Roulant stood where he was, and, after he'd marked Guarinn's position, he never looked away from Thorne.

  The night began to shimmer around Thorne, waver like the air above a banked fire. Una, who'd been still as stock, made a sound then, a whisper of boot-heel against stone as she crept closer to the opening of her small shelter to see.

  Faint though the sound had been, it was heard.

  Thorne jerked his head up, looked directly at her.

  Cold fear skittered along Una's skin, cramped her belly painfully. She wanted to reach for her dagger, but she could only sit motionless, caught and stilled by Thorne's eyes — the eyes of an animal lurking beyond the campfire's pale. And the shape of him, she thought, the shape of him is somehow wrong. Something about his face, the length of his arms. But surely that was a trick of moonlight and shimmering air? And crouching there, he didn't hold himself like a man, on his knees. He had hands and feet flat to the ground, as an animal would.

  Una pressed her hands hard to her mouth, trying to muffle her cry of horror and pity when she saw Thorne look away, turn all his attention to a feverish gnawing at the rope that bound him.

  The rope wasn't doing a good job of holding him now, for his shape was changing rapidly, and in some places the coil was slipping away from what had once been a man's wrist or ankle… and were now the smaller joints of an animal, a broad-chested wolf, its gray pelt silver in the light of two moons, its dripping fangs glistening.

  Guarinn cried "Now, Roulant! DO IT!" and instinctively Una shoved herself far back against the broken wall behind her, flinching as rubble slithered down the hill, the clatter of stone loud in the night.

  The sound did not distract Guarinn, his axe hit the wolf in the shoulder, biting hard, though not lodging in either muscle or bone. But Roulant hesitated, if only the space of a heart's beat, and so when the wolf leaped at him, it was well beneath the arrow's flight. Roaring, the wolf hit him hard, sent him crashing to the stony ground, pinned him there with its weight.

  And then Una bolted out of her shelter, ran across the moon-lighted ruin, her own dagger in hand, before she knew exactly what she meant to do.

  They were upon him, the smaller male and the young female, with daggers that would bite deeper than his fangs could. The wolf, who knew nothing about rage or vengeance or any purpose other than survival, heaved up from the one sprawled helpless beneath him, abandoned the enticing scent of blood and meat
for immediate survival.

  On the wings of pain, like wings of fire, the wolf won its freedom at the price of another agonizing bound over the broken wall. It left blood on the stones of the hillside, all along the path into the forest, and it carried away with it the noose still clinging round its neck.

  Guarinn had made a bright, high campfire in the center of the ruin, but Roulant didn't think it was doing much to warm or comfort Una. Nor did it seem to help Una that Roulant held her tightly in his arms — he wondered if she would ever stop weeping. Somewhere to the north the wolf howled, a long and lonely cry. Una shuddered, and Roulant held her closer.

  "Una," he said, turning away from the reminder of failure. "Why did you follow me here?"

  She sat straighter, her fists clenched on her knees, her eyes still wet but no longer pouring tears. "I've known for two years that you went out into the forest on the Night. And I've known…"

  She looked at Guarinn sitting hunched over the fire. The dwarf turned a little away, seemingly disinterested in whatever they discussed. Roulant, who knew him, understood that he was offering privacy.

  "You've known what?" he asked, gently.

  "That something's come between us. Something — a secret. Roulant, I've been afraid, and I had to know why you went into the forest on the Night, when no one else — "

  "Someone else," Guarinn amended. "Thorne and me. And now that you're here, I suppose you think you should know the secret you've spied out?"

  Una bristled, and Roulant shook his head. "Guarinn, she's here and that gives her a right to know what she saw."

  "Not as far as I'm concerned."

  "Maybe not," Roulant said. "But she has rights where I'm concerned. I should have honored them before now."

  Guarinn eyed them both, quietly judging. "All right, then. Listen well, Una, and I'll give you the answer you've come looking for.

  "This ruin you see around us used to be Thorne's house," he said. "A quiet place and peaceful. No more though. It's only a pile of stone now, a cairn to mark the place where three dooms were doled out this night thirty years ago. Three dooms, twined one round the other to make a single fate."

  The wind blew, tangling the smoke and flame of the small campfire. Roulant wrapped his arms around Una again and held her close for warmth.

  "Girl," the dwarf said. "Your hiding place tonight was once a bridal chamber. It never saw the joy it was fitted out for…"

  "Thorne asked but two guests to come witness and celebrate his marriage. One of them was me, and I was glad to stand with him as he pledged his wedding vows. The other was Tam Potter, and his was a double joy that night, for he was Thorne's friend and the bride's cousin. She was from away south, and I don't think her closest kin liked the idea of her wedding a mage. But Tam was fair pleased, and so he was the kinsman who bestowed her hand.

  "Mariel, the girl's name; and she was pretty enough, but no rare beauty. Yet that night she glowed brightly, put the stars to shame; for so girls will do when they are soon to have what they want and need. She needed Thorne Shape-shifter and had flouted most of her kin to have him. No less did Thorne need her.

  "The first night of autumn, it was, and the bright stars shone down on us as we stood outside the cottage. Old legends have it that wedding vows taken in the twined light of the red moon and the silver will make a marriage strong in love and faith. Perhaps those legends would have been proven that night. Perhaps. We did never learn that, for another guest came to the wedding — uninvited, unwelcome, and the first we knew of his coming was when he stood in our midst, dark and cold as death.

  "A mage, that uninvited guest, black-robed and with a heart like hoar-frost — and you must remember that this is no tale of rival suitors, one come in the very nick of time to rapt away the maiden he loves. This is a tale of two young men, one so poisonously jealous of the other that he must — for hate — spoil whatever his rival in power had.

  "The name of the Spoiler? I will not speak it. Let it never be remembered. This is how dwarves reward murderers, and I know no other way as good.

  "He laid hands on the girl, that dark mage, in a way no man should touch another's wife; magicked her from sight before any one of us could move to prevent. Aye, but he didn't take her far, in hatred and arrogance took her only within the cottage. In the very instant we knew her gone, we heard her voice raised in terror and rage. Close as she was, the evil mage's wizard ways kept us from coming to her aid until it was too late. The spell lifted. Thorne found her quickly in the bridal chamber. And he saw the mage defile her… and worse.

  "Mariel lay cold and still on the ground, like a fragile pretty doll flung aside and broken, Thorne's dear love stricken for spite by the Spoiler.

  "Seeing her dead, Thorne Shape-shifter showed the Spoiler how he'd earned his name.

  "You have seen the wolf, and so you know what the Spoiler saw in the moments before his death. But you have never heard such screaming as I heard that night: never heard such piteous pleading, nor heard anyone wail for mercy as the Spoiler did, him torn by the fangs of the great gray wolf.

  "Tam Potter and I could have tried to stop Thorne, but we did not. We stood by, watched the wolf at his ravening work. We should have granted mercy."

  Despite the hot, high fire, Una sat shivering, her hand a small fist in Roulant's.

  "Tam died wishing we'd granted that mercy," Guarinn said softly. "And I sit here now wishing no less, for the Spoiler died with a curse on his lips. It was a hard one, as the curses of dying mages tend to be, and it marked us all with the fate of hunter and hunted."

  Stiff and cold from sitting, Una got to her feet; she did not answer when Roulant called to her. She needed a place to be private with what she'd learned. The night was crisp and bright, as lovely as it must have been this time thirty years ago. As she walked, Una discovered the shape of the ruin, saw that it was very like the little stone house near the bend of the brook in Dimmin. It lacked only one room to be exactly the same. In the Dimmin house, Thorne kept only a stark sleeping loft under the eaves.

  Una stood for a long time before the dark mouth of the little cave of fire-blacked beam and broken stone that had sheltered her tonight; all that was left of a fouled bridal chamber.

  She returned to stand by the fire. "Tell me," she said.

  "Thorne must surrender his very self one night each year and hope that Roulant or I will end the curse by killing the wolf. This," Guarinn said, "is an inherited obligation."

  Una stood quietly, her eyes on the fire, the flames and the embers. "If you kill the wolf, what will happen to Thorne?"

  It was Roulant — silent till then — who answered.

  "The curse will be over. He'll begin to age, grow old again, like the rest of us. Thorne hasn't got any elven blood, Una, though everyone thinks so. It's the curse that's held him in time."

  "Guarinn," she said softly. "Why haven't you killed the wolf in all these thirty years?"

  "You'd think it would be easy, aye? Take the first shot as he was changing and end the matter. It isn't so easy. Once before, binding him slowed the change, and we tried that again tonight. But sometimes

  …" The dwarf shuddered. "Sometimes he's changed between one breath and the next. Sometimes faster than that, and the wolf is gone before either one of us can pick up a weapon. He doesn't just look like a wolf. He IS one! He'll tear at you, running, and he's too canny to stay around fighting losing battles.

  "So," she said. "You have to go out and hunt the wolf?"

  Neither answered. A glance passed between them and Roulant got to his feet. He took her hand, his own very cold as he led her into the shadow of a low broken wall.

  "Una," he said. "We can kill the wolf if we can find it — "

  "That won't be hard tonight. You could track him by the blood."

  "We could. Except…" His face shone white in the moonlight, his eyes dark with dread. "Except that we dare not set foot out there!"

  She frowned, leaned on the wall to look out. All she saw w
as night and stars and the moons hanging over the clearing. She heard night noise, owls wondering and hares scampering, a stream laughing over stones.

  "I know," Roulant said. "I see everything that you see, just as you see it. When I'm standing here." He turned his back on the forest. "When I set foot outside the ruin — even hold my hand out beyond the wall… It's terrible out there. The Spoiler laid a curse on us too, one we've never found a way past. In here, we're safe. Out there

  … they'll kill us."

  Una heard this, but she was staring out at the forest and the night, thinking about what he'd said about things being very different beyond the wall. She looked down and saw her loosely clasped hands just beyond the wall. Unlike the others, she neither saw nor felt any curse in the forest or the night.

  Una turned away from the wall and walked past Roulant and Guarinn without a word. She picked up Roulant's bow and quiver on the way. She'd not gotten but a few yards when she heard Roulant shout something, heard Guarinn scrambling to his feet, echoing the warning cry. Una ran, heeding no warning. She vaulted the wall where the wolf had fled.

  As she bounded down the hill, Una hoped that whatever kept Roulant and Guarinn helpless in the ruin would not affect her. It was frightening enough to go hunting a wounded wolf in the night, and her only a middling shot with a bow. Still, the beast was wounded, and if she could once get a good aim, she'd be able to kill it.

  Roulant jumped the wall, chased heedlessly after Una. And he thought: Idiot girl! Guarinn was a long reach behind. He prayed that Roulant would be able to snatch her back to safety in time, that he wouldn't have to follow.

  Una was too fast. She vanished into the shadows at the foot of the hill. Roulant stood where he'd landed.

  Guarinn eyed the darkness, and Roulant standing outside the wall, straining like a leashed hound. The night would spring alive at any moment, suddenly boiling with horror. The wall would be on them.