“Carim said he would challenge their leader for all of the meat or nothing. We tried to make them stop after he broke Carim's leg, but there was nothing we could do. Their leader said it was punishment for insulting his clan's honour.”
“Fools,” Ulric growled. “Over meat? You know I cannot let this go unanswered.”
“Let us go back with more of our warriors,” one of the men said. “We will prove ourselves worthy this time! Alpha Kotal's clan will pay with blood of their own.”
“I care not for your need to prove yourselves,” Ulric replied, silencing the man with a sharp gesture. “What of my need? You were fools. Kotal is a warrior. If he thinks my clan is weak, he will try to take more from us next time. Now you force me to spill more blood to prove him wrong.”
“Forgive us, Alpha.”
Ulric shook his head, gazing across the plains to the north. The horizon vanished into a tangle of overgrown land that marked the end of his territory. The northern plains began somewhere beyond, over which Alpha Kotal ruled from his isolated den atop a stone outcrop. There was nothing he wanted less than to make his next decision, but he knew there was no other way. Blood called for blood, and he could not afford for his clan to be seen as weak. Not when they were on the cusp of greatness.
“You will go back with more warriors tomorrow,” he said. “Track down some of Kotal's wolves, and maim two of them.”
The men nodded, their eyes burning with determination. “What if Carim dies this night, Alpha?”
“Then kill them instead.” Ulric turned away, closing his eyes in distaste. “But... not youngsters. Take the one who did this to Carim, if you can.”
“It will be as you say, Alpha. We shall not return until it is done.”
Ulric continued to stare out over the plains as the sun began to dip, suddenly regretting the decision to send his daughters away on their own. His territory was safe, but would it always be so? The thought of one of his own girls suffering Carim's fate made him shudder with anger. Alpha Kotal would pay for his aggression, and that would draw an end to it. The clan of Ulric was the greatest power this side of the mountains, and they would not be preyed upon by their rivals. He refused.
He was alpha, and this was his will.
—2—
Sister and Brother
What Adel saw that day on the plains had frightened her. Carim lived, but not every warrior that followed after him was so fortunate. She understood little of what happened in the seasons to come, only that a man named Alpha Kotal, who lived in a land far away to the north, was their enemy now. Her father's warriors went to fight him often, painting their bodies for war and partaking of the seers' magic draughts to fill them with courage before they left. Adel did not like it when the warriors went to fight. Sometimes they came back happy, and the clan celebrated and feasted long into the night, but other times they returned wounded, or not at all. The pack became sad then, and her father grew angry. Before long more warriors would go out to fight, and once again they would hope to celebrate with a feast upon their return, rather than a pyre to burn the bodies of those who had fallen.
For the first time in her life Adel was happy for winter to come that year, for the men stopped going out to fight once the snowfall came. The clan retreated to their winter den in the south, packing their belongings and hiding themselves away in a cluster of caves near the base of the mountains. Adel missed the sun and the warmth, but she was happy that her father had time to play with her again. Though he still seemed sad and angry often, he began to smile again as the cold season drew on. When the snow started to melt, Adel sat in her father's lap outside their cave to watch the sun rise and set, the pair filling their hours with the natural beauty of the plains around them.
“I like the sun,” she said one morning. “Why does everyone always sleep when it comes up?”
“We are a people of the moon, Adel,” her father explained. “The sun spirit is powerful, but his light was not meant for us. Our time is the night. You will understand once you feel your own wolf stirring within you.”
“Is that why everyone is happy this winter? Because the sun has gone away?”
Ulric went silent for a long time before answering, and Adel grew afraid that she might have made him angry with her.
“No,” he said after a while. “I do not like the winter. But this winter helped me remember things as they were before.”
“Before the fighting?”
“Yes. I hope they can be that way again soon.”
Adel shifted in his lap, playing with a handful of soft twigs she had been trying to bend into the shape of a bracelet. “Me too. Can you tell everyone to stop fighting?”
“No, Adel, I cannot.”
“But it makes everyone sad. Why can't it be the way it was before?”
“You do not understand,” Ulric sighed. “Perhaps you never will. Honour and battle are the concerns of men. As alpha, I face them so that you never have to.”
“The warriors say that Alpha Kotal has women fight for him as well.”
“That is not our way.” A note of impatience had slipped into her father's voice. “I would never send females to fight for our clan. It is against our honour.”
“Why?”
Ulric gripped her beneath the shoulders and pulled her out of his lap, turning the girl around so that he could fix her with a firm glare. “It is not your place to ask these questions of me, Adel. Your sister understands that, why cannot you? Things are the way they are. You need not understand them. I do not ask the seers how to speak with the spirits, just as they do not ask me how to fight our enemies.”
Adel looked down at her feet, upset that she had made her father speak harshly to her. “I only want to be wise like Uriel. I want to understand.”
“Be wise by doing as I say. Ask questions of your mother and sister. It is already time you began following them on the seer's path. But no more talk of fighting, do you understand?”
The girl nodded reluctantly, knowing it was better to placate her father with agreement whenever he was like this. Even if she did not ask any more questions, she still longed to understand. Why did the men need to fight? Why did they need to die? Nothing had changed, yet for some reason everything had. She did not ask any more questions that winter, but the desire to know still burned strong within the girl's heart.
The seasons turned, and men continued to go north. More blood and heartache returned. Adel began not to mind the cries of pain and the sight of rent flesh. She helped her sister and the other seers sometimes, helping to hold wounds closed or fetch tools and water. There was little time for her to be instructed in the healing arts as the others worked, but as she watched, she learned. Fire could help seal a wound and stop it from bleeding. Bone would not heal properly unless it was put back into place and held still. Sometimes—many times—it was better to leave a person maimed than to try and save limbs that were broken beyond repair.
The ugly consequences of battle no longer frightened Adel, but she resented them no less. It was a constant fear. An ever-present worry that someone else might not return from the fighting, or else fall cold and still in front of her as she watched the seers try to save them. Whenever she could, she spent time alone by herself, enjoying the peace and quiet. She liked having time to think and ask questions, and the other children of the pack had little patience for her inquisitiveness. They thought she liked to spoil their games by making them different, or suggesting new ways to play that they disliked. She did not mind their hostility so much. It was more fun to spend time with her sister anyway. Uriel always listened and answered her questions. She never grew impatient or upset. The time Adel spent on her own was important to her, but it would have been lonely without Uriel there to share her company afterwards.
And yet even her sister, who had always been Adel's closest friend, began to lack the time for her after she was mated to Carim that summer. Uriel had seemed hesitant when her father suggested the pairing, but she was eager to
please, and had agreed without protest. They were a good match. Everyone said so. The seers foresaw the bond that had been forged between their spirits when Uriel saved Carim's life the summer prior, and a strong, brave young hunter was the perfect match for a girl who would no doubt rise to a position of peerless status in her coming years. Ulric and his mate Freia were proud that the pair would soon give them strong grandchildren, and so long as her mother and father were happy, so too was Uriel. She was joined with Carim on the night of the summer fires, and for a time the pack was happy again as they shared in the young lovers' apparent bliss.
All but Adel. The others might have delighted in her sister's mating, but she knew Uriel would have preferred to remain the way she was. The two of them were alike in that way. Uriel rarely talked of young men the same way the other girls did. Carim was her friend, and she cared for him deeply, but not with the kind of longing Adel saw between many of the other mated couples.
Why was it that their father made such decisions for them? Why did the men have to go out and fight? Why did Uriel have to be mated? Was the alpha wrong to decide these things, or did Adel simply not understand?
She kept her worries to herself, watching another winter pass and another spring bring the land back to life. Still the men went north, but less often now. The fighting had become a routine, something that had to keep going because... it simply had to. One wound begat another. Every season or two another warrior fell. Adel's days of childish play slipped slowly behind her, giving way to periods of deeper thought, and more time spent learning the ways of healing and the spirits from her mother.
Once summer brightened the skies she began to go out into the plains again with her siblings, just as she used to with her father. He rarely joined them these days, and insisted that they always go east near the river, or south toward the mountains. He no longer liked them venturing north.
A muggy, clear-skied evening found her playing a game with Uriel and their brother, Karel, though the young man insisted it was training to help him fight better and not the playtime of a child. Uriel sat and watched from atop a small hillock, nursing a belly that had begun to swell with the promise of a coming child, as Adel threw long sticks for Karel to try and catch in his wolf's jaws a short distance away.
“The Sun People fight by throwing sticks like these,” Karel explained after finally managing to snatch one of Adel's throws from the air, panting in the wake of his reversion from the shape of his wolf. “If I can catch them, they will never hit me!”
“How does throwing sticks help them fight?” Adel asked.
Karel chuckled and put an arm around her, wandering back toward Uriel. “They make the tips sharp. They have no fangs or claws of their own, so they have to use flint and wood instead. Reiak says they are cowards with weak spirits, but I think they are clever to fight the way they do.”
“Then you are fortunate we are not fighting them,” Uriel said with a smile. “You should learn how to deal with other wolves instead.”
Karel jutted out his chin. “Don't be so sure. Father says there are Sun People in the forests to the east.”
“Let them stay there,” Adel said. “I don't want us to fight anyone else.”
“None of us do, Adel,” Uriel replied. “But maybe it will be over soon.”
“I do not think so. Father only cares about his honour.”
“Sister!” Karel said sharply, letting go of her. “His honour is your honour. It is all of ours. We are his pack, and he fights for us. Don't let him catch you speaking of him in that way.”
“She is only upset because people get hurt,” Uriel said soothingly, in the way she always did to calm a brewing disagreement between her siblings. “It is not Adel's fault she speaks too freely from her heart.”
Karel scoffed, tapping his temple. “Women speak from their hearts, a man speaks with his mind. It is no wonder she doesn't understand.”
Adel glowered at her brother. She understood better than him. At least, she thought so. Karel was not the one who tended their wounded kin whenever they returned home maimed and on the brink of death. He thought fighting was brave and glorious, when to Adel it seemed anything but. Why was it that Karel got to speak and think the way he did just because he was her elder, and because he was a man?
“Father used to speak from his heart,” she said. “He is different now.”
“You're jealous he takes me to train with the other warriors instead of chasing butterflies with you,” Karel replied. “He can't waste time like that any more.”
“It was not a waste of time!”
Karel snorted, his nostrils flaring in impatience. “The only waste of time is you. Stop being a child, Adel.”
Anger flared behind the young girl's eyes, lashing out of her like a whip as she slapped at her brother's chin, catching the side of his jaw with her fingernails. Karel jerked away, pressing his fingers against the scratch as a thin line of blood began to stand out against his cheek, mouth agape in silent indignation. For a moment Adel saw the flush rising in his cheeks, the tears beading in his eyes, and then he struck back at her with a clenched fist, hitting her twice as hard.
“Stop, both of you!” Uriel snapped, her voice every bit as sharp as their mother's.
The burst of anger Adel had felt the moment Karel's fist struck her instantly cooled, leaving her to nurse the bruise on her shoulder as her brother turned and ran away, bounding back toward the river in the shape of his wolf.
“Let him go,” Uriel said, much more gently this time. “You needn't let him upset you like that. You know how it always ends.”
A painful grip squeezed at Adel's heart, but unlike her brother it brought no tears to her eyes. The next time she hit him, she would make sure to use all of her fingernails.
“Adel.” Uriel's voice hardened again. There was no hiding anything from her.
The younger sister sighed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. She pushed the last of her frustration down, for Uriel's sake. “He's such a fool.”
“Maybe, but he loves you like I do. He is still our brother. You shouldn't hit him, even when he makes you upset.”
“He deserved it.”
Uriel gave her a patient smile, patting the spot of grass next to her. “He's bigger and stronger than you. Did it really make you feel better when he hit you back?”
Adel folded her arms in a huff, but slumped down next to her sister despite herself. “No.”
“He might be big and strong, but he doesn't have your spirit. That is why he ran away. He'll probably go and cry now.”
“I didn't mean to,” Adel said as guilt began to creep into her stomach.
Uriel put an arm around her waist. “Even though he is the elder, you are the wise one. There's no reason to get angry. You don't like fighting, remember?”
Adel rested her cheek against her sister's shoulder, still rubbing her bruised arm. “I'll never be as wise as you.”
“You could be, if you tried.”
“Mother and the rest of the seers get impatient with me. They say I cannot focus on anything.”
“Only because you ask them too many questions. It isn't that you can't learn, it's that you don't learn the way they want you to. I know it's hard, but it may be easier if you keep some of those questions to yourself.”
“Why?”
Uriel laughed. “Because things are the way they are. Maybe if you become a great seer one day you can change them, but not right now. Even if you can't understand something, that does not mean you always have to question it. It's just like listening to Father. Isn't it easier to always do as he says?”
“Sometimes. But I don't like it.”
Uriel looked away then, the wind stirring her dark hair as she gazed across the plains toward the horizon. When she spoke again, it was in far more sombre tones. “One day, we shan't have to do as anyone says. We will be women, den mothers, and even the alpha will listen to us.” She smiled again, looking back to her sister. “But you must promise m
e to try your hardest. Keep some of those questions to yourself. Do as our elders say, and learn everything they have to teach you. You can be as wise as anyone, I know you can. You just have to try.”
Adel rubbed her arm again. “I still won't be nice to Karel.”
That drew another laugh from the elder sister. “One thing at a time.”
Adel turned and embraced her, snuggling into Uriel's side and resting her cheek upon the small bump of her belly. “You always answer my questions.”
“I always will. Keep them just for me, if you have to.”
Adel nodded, the last of her frustration leaving her as Uriel's soothing hands settled upon her shoulders. “I shall.”
—3—
New Life
Though Adel had come to enjoy the cold months spent secluded away in the southern caves, she would always remember that year's winter as her worst, for it marked the coming of Uriel's child. Adel had already been unhappy that Carim occupied so much of her sister's time since their mating, and a son or daughter would be yet another obstacle placed between them. It was not so much that she was jealous—though it would have been a lie to say she was completely without resentment—more that she sensed these things were a growing burden upon Uriel. All her elder sister had ever wanted was to learn the ways of the seerhood, tending wounds and divining wisdom from the spirit world. Never had she expressed any interest in love or raising children. This child felt like yet another decision imposed upon her by others, one she endured with patience and smiles whenever the rest of the pack expressed their joy at her blessing, but without any real passion of her own.
Adel had not yet learned of a seer's visions or stepped into the spirit world for herself, but in the years that followed she would always wonder whether her anxiety regarding her sister's child had been a premonition of things to come. The final days of Uriel's pregnancy were uncomfortable for her, and during a particularly painful bout of cramping she seemed almost relieved when her mother Freia informed her that it was time. The seers led her back into a secluded chamber within the honeycomb of winter caves, taking her away from the clamour of the gathered pack so that she could give birth in peace. They lit bowls of fragrant incense around the girl, some seers burning and breathing the smoke of spirit herbs so that they might seek out the soul of the unborn child and guide it safely into the waking world.
Daughter of the Night: A Book of The Moon People Page 2
