The Shadow of the Wolf clung to her, and it made them fear. Just as Wolf children grew up on tales of the Shadow Eaters, so recent history had given these girls plenty of reasons to fear the Wolf.
She shifted her back foot, dropping her weight lower. Her left hand came up before her face, fingers crooked, whilst her right held the curved blade extended at waist level. The mantle of her lessons settled on her, and for once she felt each part of her in its proper place. If Aritchaka had come by just then, she would have found no fault at all.
But the priesthood were not present to arbitrate. The other three girls had backed off to give Imshalma space, and it was just the two of them in the whole world. Maniye’s opponent had adopted a counter-stance, blade held high and jutting forwards, offhand low, halfway to reaching for Maniye’s weapon. The girl had been learning these stances and moves for years: her technique would always be better. If this was a dance, or the slow measured steps of a lesson, then Maniye would always be stumbling to keep up.
Some part of her mind had frozen – What comes next? – just as she sometimes found in practice. The animal inside her knew that she could not afford to be the one reacting, though. Even as Imshalma moved forwards, so Maniye’s feet were already dancing. She passed backwards three quick steps, because over a short distance it was always possible to go backwards faster than the opponent could advance. That was Lesson One. Lesson Two was when she braced against her back foot, pushing herself towards her opponent as Imshalma was trying to close the gap. In the moment after, she had reversed her motion, but before she was within reach of that bronze claw, she Stepped.
She managed the pounce badly, the dagger nipping her across the foreleg, and her impact coming at an angle, so that she made Imshalma stagger without knocking her down. Then she had leapt off, ending up on the far side of her opponent, knowing that, without that dagger pinned, she could not stay within its reach.
They both Stepped in the same instant, Imshalma to Tiger, Maniye to girl, her blade sweeping so that it cut her opponent across the muzzle, sending the animal reeling away, pawing at the shallow wound.
She felt her heart racing within her. For a moment she was fighting against her own body, trying to settle back into her ready stance. If Imshalma had been able to break through her own pain to mount an attack, things could have gone badly. Instead she was retreating again, now on human feet and dabbing at a line of blood that traced the bridge of her nose and ran along one cheekbone. For a moment Maniye thought that her opponent lacked the will to go on, but then some metal came into the other girl’s eyes and she was striding forwards, passing with the dagger, changing stances fluidly, all her years of practice flooding back into her.
Maniye Stepped, Stepped back, retreating before the darting bronze that kept coming for her. Abruptly her tiger eyes could not see a way past the blade. She tried a feint to give herself room, got her footing wrong and took a raking scratch across her forearm. She was aware that she had been backing up for too long – that she might hit a wall at any moment.
Something made Imshalma pause: it was Maniye’s expression, all bared teeth and frustration and Wolf features. In that moment, Maniye struck back, slapping for Imshalma’s knife hand, letting her own blade find the lines that she had been taught: belly, throat, armpit, flank. Imshalma fell back rapidly, and they both Stepped at once, pushing forwards into a grappling embrace of tigers, a lightning exchange of claws that marked both of them. Then Imshalma had twisted aside, shrugging out of the clasp and Stepping back to drag her blade past Maniye’s eyes. It left a slight wound, a scalp wound, but the shock of it threw Maniye back to her human form, out of position and off balance. Imshalma had a hand bunched in the collar of her tunic, holding her down, with her dagger drawn back to thrust.
Maniye Stepped, without conscious decision, and got her teeth into the other girl’s wrist. Had Imshalma held to her purpose she could still have stabbed and ended it, but instead she jerked away with a yell. Instead of holding – as every instinct was howling at her to do – Maniye broke away and made a snarling, defiant retreat, blood in her jaws. Her wolf jaws.
She Stepped to human instantly, standing in her best approximation of a ready stance, and Imshalma was still facing her, still nominally fighting, but the other girl’s eyes were wide, the expression of someone whose fears have been made flesh: seeing the Wolf brought to life right there in the temple.
She found her balance, though, levelling her blade at Maniye once more, although there was a terror still lurking in her eyes. She would not back down.
Then there was only Aritchaka’s voice calling out, ‘Enough!’
The priestess stood at the far end of the passage, the same direction the four girls had come from. Maniye felt sure she had been watching there for quite long enough.
‘Your dedication to your studies is admirable,’ Aritchaka said, in a sharp-edged voice. ‘However, I feel you both require more practice so as to master the proper forms. Have those injuries washed and tended to.’
Please don’t tell her. Please don’t tell my mother, but the words could not be spoken and Aritchaka’s expression was stern.
Following a day of practice in which she did not look at or speak to any of the other girls – and they had returned the same cold courtesy – Aritchaka came to her as she was bedding down.
‘Do not sleep. Tonight I will come for you,’ the priestess instructed. She was staring, weighing what she saw, but her face could not be read.
‘What is it?’ Maniye wanted Hesprec there, because she dearly needed anyone who might be on her side. Although he was tolerated within the Shining Halls, his presence in the temple itself was very much on sufferance. He could not stay there long. She was alone.
‘The Queen has sent for you,’ Aritchaka told her. ‘Tonight we feast with the Tiger. It is for the priesthood and the great families – but she will have you there.’ She was unhappy about it. Maniye felt her own innards clench. What did this mean? Was Joalpey going to acknowledge her at last? Would the priesthood stand for it, if she did? Or was she herself to be offered to the Tiger? Would it be her screams next, now the extended torment of the Swift Back scout had finally been silenced.
After that, there was nothing for it but to watch the moon climb the sky and put the stars to shame, to name the constellations as they made their procession above, and wonder if any of them might be invoked to come to her aid. Within her, her twin souls roiled in a festering sore of fight and flight, keyed up to a danger that she could not assess or confront. The foot-dragging stretch between dusk and midnight was a long and lonely road for her.
And then at last she heard the soft scuff of Aritchaka’s return. The priestess carried with her a robe of soft hide and a cloak of tiger fur, which lay heavy enough on Maniye’s shoulders that she felt the Tiger himself was pressing down on her. Meekly, mutely, she followed in the woman’s footsteps into the heart of the temple, into that same room of smoke and shadow where the insubstantial spectre of the Tiger dwelt.
She had expected there might be other students – those in favour or disfavour – or perhaps the priesthood all mantled in tiger-skin, but Aritchaka backed out again as soon as she had delivered Maniye there, and then it was just the two of them: the girl with the Wolf tribe face and the Queen of the Tiger people.
Joalpey, whose secret name was Strength Under Moonlight, forced her head around to gaze directly at her daughter. The muscles of her jaw clenched, but this time she did not look away. Her eyes just lanced and lanced deeper, as though Maniye was a boil.
She knows. Just one lapse into wolf shape, after resisting it for so long . . . but of course word had come to her mother. Is this to be a reckoning then? Maniye felt the Tiger cease his pacing and settle down in the darkness behind her, head resting on his paws, and watching. Something was to happen here: her twin souls knew it. She could almost hear the great cat’s rumbling purr of anticipation, feeling it like a tremor in the ground.
Then there were serva
nts: thralls, men with heavy collars bearing platters of meat. They looked at neither woman, merely trod about the chamber in fixed paths, eyes on their feet as if terrified of stepping astray.
‘Sit with me,’ Joalpey instructed. ‘Maniye . . . Many Tracks . . . daughter, sit with me.’
She folded herself down alongside the altar and, after a moment, Maniye followed her example.
‘Aritchaka and the priesthood hold the Tiger’s feast, but the Queen takes her meat apart from her subjects,’ Joalpey explained. She was watching Maniye as if the girl was venomous, or apt to become violently mad. ‘But you shall eat with me. Please . . .’
Maniye took a sliver of meat: it was so tender that it seemed to melt on her tongue, delicately spiced and rich with juices. She was suddenly aware of how hungry she was, having fasted since noon. Joalpey found a smile and forced it onto her face, picking at the flesh herself.
‘They tell me you learn fast, devouring all they have to teach you,’ she observed.
‘I want to be of the Tiger,’ Maniye insisted. ‘I will do anything, if it means that.’
Joalpey regarded her doubtfully as the girl scooped up another slice of meat and tore into it. ‘In this short time, you have made great advances, they say. You cannot walk the steps of the Tiger’s dance, yet each footfall is not so very far away. You do not know all the cycles of our heroes and our deeds, yet you can tell a tale that is not so very far removed. And they say you Step well.’ Her voice had gone hard on that word, but Maniye could see that she was fighting down the bitter edge in it.
Maniye opened her mouth again, not sure what she should say next. She longed for Hesprec’s wisdom, to know what convoluted sequence of words would break down the barrier still between them. Surely there had to be some magic that could accomplish it.
‘The Tiger’s sacred meal,’ Joalpey gestured. ‘How do you like it?’
‘Very well,’ Maniye said, desperate to please, although it was true.
‘You understand, then?’
The girl frowned. ‘Understand?’
‘That you eat the flesh of the Wolf.’
That was no great revelation: amongst the Winter Runners she had eaten wolf-meat many times. It was common, when a hearth-woman wished to become with child, that she would have her hunter mate kill a wolf and butcher its body for the pot. In that way the beast’s soul would be cut loose, and might seek out a new life within her belly. Usually there was enough to spare, and it was good practice to woo the Wolf’s favour by gifting it to many. Still, the meat was tough and poor eating, not like the feast currently before her.
‘This tastes like no wolf,’ she remarked, around a mouthful, ‘This is tender as pig.’
Joalpey regarded her intently. ‘It is Wolf,’ and this time Maniye caught the special inflection, and a sudden shudder of fright went through her.
With great willpower she forced the mouthful down, aware of sitting suddenly on a knife-edge. Yes, the Swift Back scout had stopped screaming at last. She had not asked what would be done with him after that.
‘But, if he died . . .’ The words were drawn out of her as though she had eaten a keen-edged thread along with the meat, and now it was being hauled back out. Humans were animals, animals were human. There was no line between them save the ability to Step. Souls passed one to the other. To eat of a deer that had worn a man’s shape was no different than to eat of a mute deer that had not.
But Joalpey meant something different.
‘His ghost . . .’ Maniye got out, ‘is here?’
‘Yes,’ the Queen confirmed calmly, and selected another morsel herself.
Maniye sat very still. Because this was a Tiger thing; this was a tradition of her mother’s house. This was how they did things in the Shining Halls. But it was wrong, it was terribly wrong. Not eating the flesh of a man, for all beasts were men, but to eat his soul. To trap it within the yoked human flesh and to consume it – to give a mad ghost sanctuary inside your own body – was to fill yourself too full of souls – and she had two already fighting within her.
‘This is how the Tiger is fed. He is a god. What do you think he eats? Other people do not understand this, but we know.’
And Maniye thought, The Shadow Eaters, the Wolves call us. It is not just a casual name.
Her hands shook. She thought that she could feel the dead Wolf’s ghost squirming inside her. And yet . . . and yet the Tiger had padded up behind her, darkening the gloom further with its smoky presence, waiting to be fed.
There were rituals that they had tried to teach her, words and forms and steps. Aware that Joalpey’s eyes were fixed upon her fiercely, Maniye stood, trying to master the hammering of her heart. She took a deep breath – and turned to face the god.
Her eyes saw only the dancing patterns of shadow that the fires threw against the wall, but her mind told her that these were the striped flanks of the Tiger, that the hot air was his breath. The knowledge, the utter certainty that he was immediately before her came like a blow, as though that sightless muzzle had suddenly nudged at her chest, rocking her back on her heels.
She could not remember all the moves, the gestures of invitation and propitiation, but she could guess and follow her instincts, just as Joalpey had said. The sequence was not long, and if she did not get every motion of it exactly right, she was never far away – hovering about it like a crow over a dying thing. With a mix of grace and awkward pauses she invited the Tiger to feed, to take the struggling soul of the Swift Back scout from between her lips.
As she imagined that vast maw gaping for her, she wondered what else it might take from her. She felt her own Wolf nature backing as far into her as it could go, tail between its legs, yellow eyes glinting.
When she turned back, with the dark tide that was the Tiger receding in her mind, Joalpey was standing there – close enough to touch. She was still staring – forcing herself to stare at the girl. One hand was raised halfway, as if to rest on Maniye’s arm, but it had paused. For a moment – for a long, tense agony of a moment – she remained still, save that Maniye could hear her mother’s ragged breathing.
‘I want a daughter,’ the Queen got out. ‘I want an heir of my own blood. You are all the heirs of my blood, all that there will ever be . . .’ The outstretched hand twitched, contracting into a fist. ‘But . . . but . . . but I look on you and see it in your eyes, in your face. You have a wolf soul.’
‘I have a tiger soul.’ Maniye’s voice was just a whisper.
‘It is not enough,’ Joalpey forced out through clenched teeth.
‘Aritchaka has told you—’
‘Aritchaka,’ Joalpey hissed. ‘Aritchaka has spoken for you. You are strong, she says. You are clever. You are brave. You are all the things a child of the Tiger should be. But I see these things in you, too, and it is a Wolf’s strength, a Wolf’s cleverness. I cannot change my eyes. I cannot forget them: Stone River and that loathsome creature his priest. And you are them. They sit in your face, and I cannot see you past them.’ She took two steps away, convulsively. The hand that had been reaching out was now warding.
Maniye tried to voice something: a plea, a protest. What sound came out did not make a complete word.
‘And they will use you against me,’ her mother whispered. ‘The Tiger tells me so. The Tiger tells me that you must be prey, if you are not his. What am I to do? I want to make you mine, but I cannot. I cannot bear you to be here. I thought I could face it, after all this time, but it still cuts me – it hurts just as it did.’ She turned away, fists clenched by her sides, shaking.
Maniye felt the Tiger’s breath still on her neck, its insatiable hunger for souls. You must be prey, if you are not his.
She fled then, while Joalpey was still wrestling with herself. Any later would be too late.
32
Shyri had been terrorizing the local wildlife, Stepped into her Plains form, a Laughing Girl indeed. The deer and squirrels and groundhogs and coyotes she scared up had no idea what she was.
A long-limbed, spotted demon with swift and terrible jaws, she killed more by fright than by trauma, Asmander reckoned. She killed more than they needed, too, but she was enjoying herself, and he had no intention of stopping her. It was a bitter realization but, of the three of them, she was the only effective hunter in this country. He disdained to sully his Champion’s shape for something as mundane as finding food, and neither Old Crocodile nor the Dragon could hunt in such cold. The year was supposedly getting warmer, but Asmander could only assume that in the Crown of the World that word carried some other meaning.
‘Come south to our country,’ Asmander had told the Laughing Girl. ‘Come hunt the channels of the estuary or the banks of the Tsotec’s head and then we’ll see.’ But she just laughed at him, and she was right to do so.
‘I will,’ she said, her grin widening from ear to ear as she made him gut and spit the spoils of her pre-dawn hunt. ‘And I’ll outdo you there, too. There is nowhere in the world my people cannot thrive.’
‘Then why do you rule just a hand’s breadth of the Plains, and no more? Where is the great Empire of the Hyena?’ Asmander demanded, nettled.
She put her face right in front of his, eyes to his eyes. ‘O leaping Champion, we are a patient people. We are not hasty. The Plains are covered with the dust of those who have mounted greatness and failed to keep a hold. We have seen the Aurochs and the Horn Bearers, we have seen the Cats come and go. We will see these northern Wolves fall, and no doubt we will visit the ruins of your own great city one day. We watch you all claw up for the sun, and then burn, and we laugh. And when you have all fallen, then we will walk the carrion road of your failure, and we will rule.’
And she had him. He was staring into those wide eyes, struck to the core with the certainty of it all, the manifest destiny of the Laughing Men and the women who led them. He could see, vividly in his mind’s eye, their dominion of bones, extending from the cold north to the deserts beyond the Tsotec.
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book 1) Page 37
