Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle - Books 10-12

by Hart, Melissa F.

  “Where did you find him, Alrik?” Her voice was like the knock of a loose branch against a tree.

  “By the old cistern, Rivka. I am sorry.”

  “Why was he at the cistern?”

  Tonna's heart flew up in her chest, as she remembered Ulfrik's instructions to her brother. The careless quest, meant to keep him away from their innocent tryst, had led him straight to his doom.

  She bit her lip, her mind in a flurry and with no idea of what to do, but she should have known how things would turn out.

  It was her clan who knew tricks and lies and half-truths. The wolf clans only had their words and their fists and their honor.

  “Madame, I am the one who sent him out there.”

  “You are the one who killed him.”

  “No, I did not kill him, Madame,” Ulfrik said, his face a mask of sorrow. “I have contributed to his death, and so I will feel it for all of my born days, but I did not kill him.”

  “The prince apologizes when there is no need.” A new voice spoke up, and now the crowd parted to reveal Bors, the wolf king's adviser. Unlike the great gray wolves of the north, he was a slender man, and the hair on his head, like the hair on his back would be when he transformed, was a deep russet. He was not old, not young, not thin and not fat, but there was something about him that made Tonna's stomach turn.

  “No need?” cried Rivka. “No need when my son lies slain here in front of me?”

  “An accident. A bit of carelessness. No one saw, and the prince bears no guilt. You should apologize for the insult you've offered him and his house.”

  Rivka spat on the ground between them, and Tonna was shocked to hear that not all of the murmurs around them were dismissing the red wolf's claim.

  He speaks of war, Tonna thought fearfully, remembering what her mother said about the man, and all too clearly, she could imagine the war that might come out of this. The fox clan was not powerful, not in its own right, but they had allies, and more battles had been won on the fox clan's willingness to resort to tricks and cleverness than anyone liked to think of.

  “The prince is involved,” said one voice.

  “No, the old vixen oversteps...”

  The voices went on and on, and Tonna could see her mother reaching for her knife. If blood was drawn at the moot, a place of peace, then there would be war indeed and nothing anyone could do to stop it.

  The fight was growing heated, and Tonna was certain that they were moments away of the end of it all when a ferocious growl shook the encampment.

  The crowd fell silent with shock and, her heart beating fast, Tonna realized that Ulfrik was standing fast and still.

  “I bear this blame,” he said clearly. “It was not my hand that killed Aeson, but it is my word. I submit to the punishment of the wronged.”

  His words invoked ancient law. Once this guilt was admitted, it could not be retracted, and now the only battle could be one between himself and Rivka as the wronged party.

  Tonna watched, a scream trying to fight its way out of her throat, as he dropped to his knees in the dust. He looked up at her, caught her eye and there was nothing there but love for her and the knowledge that this must be done.

  Oh my love.

  Rivka's knife was trembling in her hand, and the only noise was the whistle of the autumn wind through the leaves. It was her right to extract what vengeance she could from the man who knelt in front of her. She could have left him dying for days. She could have demanded all of his property. She could have killed him swiftly and laid him down beside her own dead son.

  Her knife flashed once, and Tonna's heart stopped as it descended.

  Instead of slashing out his throat or taking out his eyes, the knife skidded a hard path down his face. Ulfrik's face was awash with blood, but Tonna could see now that though it would scar and scar terribly. The knife had simply slid along the side of his face, tracing a wound from temple to chin.

  “There,” spat Rivka. “Wear that all of your days, and never come near me and mine again.”

  She stalked away, calling for her clan to pack up their belongings and move out.

  Tonna started for Ulfrik, who lay groaning in the dirt, but then Bors was there. The red wolf scowled at her.

  “Have you not done enough to him?” Bors asked in disgust, and tearfully, she could see he was right.

  Turning, she fled after her mother, away from her dead brother, the lover she left bleeding in the dirt, and the shame that she would carry for her entire life.

  ***

  The wound stung like a hornet's assault, and it seemed like he could not wipe the blood out of his eyes before there was more there to take its place.

  “Tonna?” he tried to ask, but his voice was a harsh croak.

  He wiped more blood out of his eyes, and when he could finally see, it was not Tonna's face he saw but that of Bors, his father's adviser.

  “Where is Tonna? She's of the fox clan.”

  Bors' face was sorrowful. “Forgive, my prince, but she has cursed your name and left with the rest of her clan. She swore to never look on you again.”

  The pain of the wound and the pain of the scar was nothing compared to the rending in his chest. He tried to shake his head, tried not to believe it, but Tonna wasn't there, and the grief tore him apart.

  ***

  Deep in the old cistern, something opened its eyes.

  Something opened a mouth of sharp teeth.

  Something waited.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK ELEVEN: Dangerous Quests – Volume 11

  ***

  Dangerous Quests

  ***

  Synopsis

  Five years later, Tonna and Ulfrik are the leaders of their respective clans of shapechangers, and after the tragedy that occurred when they were last lovers, they approach each other with mistrust, caution and longing. Their mutual attraction will not let them stand apart, but coming together could mean tragedy for both of their families. This time, Tonna's beloved cousin Aja is the one caught up in a dangerous game, and Tonna and Ulfrik are brought to the point of no return.

  ***

  When she smelled the woodsmoke, Tonna knew that they were drawing close to the moot. She sighed, bracing herself. As if summoned by her thoughts, Aja appeared by her side.

  “Are you well, Chief?” The smaller woman slid her hand into Tonna's, squeezing it gently despite the formality of her speech.

  Tonna spared her friend a quick smile and nodded.

  “It's a lot to take in,” she admitted softly. She was the leader of the fox clan, the shapechangers who took on the form of foxes, and it didn't do well to be anything less than fearless or bold or clever. Still, Aja was her cousin, adopted from a clan far to the south just a few years ago. In Aja, she had found a friend and a confidante, something that had been missing from her life since her mother died two years ago.

  “Your clan hasn't been to a moot for four years,” Aja said. “It's only natural that you would be nervous now.

  “Five years,” Tonna corrected automatically. She would never lose track of how many years it had been since her brother had died and since her mother, the former chief, refused to return to the moot. The moots were annual gatherings of all of the shape-changing clans, the one time of the year where they could meet and talk and trade. There would be people there from all over the northern countries, and for five long and lonely years, the fox clan had held itself apart.

  “Five,” Aja agreed amiably. “Are you... quite well?”

  Tonna grinned, squeezing her cousin's hand. “Quite well,” she lied, but she could tell from the dubious look that crossed Aja's face that her cousin wasn't sure.

  To be honest, Tonna wasn't sure what was going to happen either. She had lost more than a brother to death and a mother to grief five years ago. She had lost a lover as well, one who’d had to step up to take the blame for Aeson's death.

  Ulfrik had prevented a war and allowed himself to be scarred by her grieving mother, but still the
fox clan had held itself apart. She had neither seen nor heard from the wolf prince since that fateful day five autumns ago, and for years, she had prevented herself from thinking it.

  However, there was nothing like a familiar scent for uncorking a memory, and as they drew closer to the campgrounds for the moot, she felt her body and her heart remember the thing she had tried so hard to forget.

  The memories were as clear as though they had happened yesterday. She remembered stalking Ulfrik with curiosity, with lust and with joy, she remembered their joining on the river bank, she remembered how he had brought her to the height of pleasure with his skilled mouth and tongue. Then she remembered the shock of seeing him on the ground, blood on his face.

  Tonna remembered being barred from his side by Bors, his father's adviser, who had looked at her with disgust and disdain. Bors looked at her as if he could see that she was low and filthy, and she had run away after her mother.

  Aja squeezed her hand tightly before letting go. “It'll be fine,” the smaller woman said. “You'll see, it will all be fine.”

  Tonna saw the banners snapping from the peaks of the tents across the valley. She picked out the sigils of the clans, saw boar, bear, heron, falcon, rabbit and weasel. She started to breathe a little easier until she saw the banner of the gray wolf clan, and she knew that nothing was going to be easy or fine.

  ***

  For a few hours, she could busy herself setting up the camp, directing her kinspeople as to where to hoist the tents and where to put their cooking fire. A cousin asked her opinion on where he should sell his herbs, and another wondered if it would be safe to let the children wander.

  All in all, it was simply the minutiae of running life for her clan, and Tonna didn't have to think about anything else until there was a presence waiting by the edge of the camp for her attention.

  Though the shape=changing people were friendly with one another, it was still considered courteous to ask permission before entering another clan's grounds. Some of the clans were more skittish than others, and with so many predators and prey represented, it was only common sense to keep people calm.

  The man who waited patiently at the edge of the fox clan's camp was enormous, easily six and a half feet tall. He was old, but his shoulders were still broad, and there were still a few traces of pepper in his mostly salt beard. He stood straight as an oak, his hands clasped behind him, and Tonna knew him immediately.

  “Alrik! You are well met!”

  She crossed the encampment to embrace him, but the old bear took her by surprise by seizing her up in a rough embrace.

  “Rivka, Rivka, you have gone too long without showing your face,” he grumbled, and she shook her head even as she pushed him away. She was short and slender without much curve to her breasts or her hips like her mother, and like her mother, her hair was as dark as night and she wore it in a long braid. She looked enough like Rivka that it sometimes gave her a pang to see herself in the mirror.

  “I'm sorry, old bear. I am Tonna. Rivka was my mother, and she passed two years since.”

  Alrik looked unperturbed by her news, only nodding in a solemn fashion. He was quite the oldest shapechanger that anyone knew about, and though his memory had become a little fuzzier in the previous years, his wits were as sharp as ever.

  “Then I will tell to you what I told to Rivka and say that you have kept your clan away from the moot for too long. You have come back, however, and it gives these old bones pleasure to see you.”

  She nodded, pulling the old bear toward the cook fire so she could offer him some food, but he held himself still. As large as he was and as powerful, she would have been just as likely to move a stone.

  “I would love to stay and learn the stories of the fortunes of your clan,” Alrik said gravely. “Indeed, nothing would please me more. However, time is short, Tonna, daughter of Rivka, and the meeting of the clan chieftains will be held at sunset.”

  Tonna nodded reluctantly. “I will be there,” she said, and he peered down into her face with a concern that was more mother hen than ancient bear.

  “You are worried. You are concerned about bad blood and crossed hearts.

  Tonna narrowed her eyes at the old man. “You are not so old that you can say whatever you like whenever you like, old bear,” she said warningly. “I am not so young that I'll play that game with you.”

  Alrik chuckled, the sound rolling like barrels down a hill. “Well, then I will simply say that I will save you a seat, because all will be curious about your clan and your interests in coming to the moot after so long away.”

  “I'll be grateful for that seat, and given that the day draws to a close, I should dress.”

  Alrik wandered off, and Tonna made her way to her newly erected tent. It was small, but it was luxurious, holding her small bed and a teak trunk that carried all of her clothes within.

  The fox clan was not wealthy, and she would not be able to show off the riches of the more wealthy clans, but still she refused to come as a beggar or a supplicant to a meeting of equals. She chose a dress in deep purple with just the barest decoration of silver pricked out on the wide sleeves' hems. She thought about plaiting her hair, but at the last moment, she decided to leave it down. It fell in waves around her shoulders, and on a whim, she tucked it up at her temples with glass-headed pins. In the dying light, they glittered like diamonds, and she smiled to herself. Trickery was a fox's game after all, and she went to meet the other clan chiefs.

  ***

  The meeting house was a long low building, half-timbered and built right into the hillside. Instead of chairs, there were benches lined along the long, long table, and it was already filling with the clan chiefs. Some clans had two or three heads, while some, like her own fox clan, had only one. At the head of the table sat a fierce-looking woman with golden eyes that picked up every bit of the torch light. Tonna knew she was the Aquila, the head of the golden eagle clan. It was their territory where the moot was held, and so she sat at the head of the table, though her power was no more than any other’s.

  Tonna quickly found Alrik, who had indeed saved her a place, and though there were some uneasy or questioning looks when she walked in, many of them were halted when the old bear reached an arm for her and treated her like a daughter.

  She was so busy glancing around and taking in the sights that she almost missed Ulfrik's entrance. Then, when she noticed him, she realized that she couldn't take her eyes away.

  Ulfrik was not tall, but he was broad, and when she had known him, he was a youth of twenty years. Now he was five years older, and he had filled out. His dark hair was cut short in the Roman fashion, and his stride was confident, a man's stride, and a warrior's. He was turned, speaking to a tall man who could only be one of the representatives from the heron clan, and Tonna couldn't tell if she wanted him to look at her or ignore her forever.

  Then he turned, and it was worse than she could have dreamed. The scar that Rivka had left on him was livid and dark, running along the left side and just barely missing his eye as it skipped from temple to chin. Still though, his eyes were worse. They were as dark as night, and for a single moment, it was as if she could see straight down to the core of him. She could see the hurt youth he was, the man he had become, and the longing he still had for her, and then it was as if a door had shut.

  Suddenly, Ulfrik was looking at her with all of the cold politeness of a stranger, and as the Aquila called the meeting to order, he took his seat further down the table away from her.

  The meeting passed in a blur as each of the members of the council introduced themselves. There was a brief pause when they came to Tonna, and Tonna met each of their gazes steadily.

  “The fox clan has been long absent from these gatherings,” mused one of the rabbit women. Her nose-tip twitched as if she had been glad of that fact. “What draws you back?”

  “Well, while the politeness of the rabbit clans always draws me in, there are many reasons my clan has chosen to return
to the moot,” Tonna said smoothly. She had seen her mother do this a hundred times, tease and talk, explain and soothe.

  “We have trade goods to offer, stories to trade and alliances to make. We have been on our own for five turns of the year, and after my mother's death, I decided that I wished to return us to the cycle of the world.”

  “Hear, hear,” Alrik agreed, pounding his heavy fist on the table. “What else are we all here for then?”

  Between Tonna's innocent look and Alrik's glare, the council moved on, and Tonna listened with only half an ear until they got to Ulfrik. With a start, she realized that if he was there, then his father was dead, and from the murmurs around the table, this was the first year he had come to the meeting.

  “Where's your father's adviser then, eh?” Alrik demanded. “Bors, that red wolf from the south. You don't have him with you.”

  “I sent him away,” Ulfrik said flatly, and that was all he cared to comment.

  Tonna, who remembered Bors' cruel comments to her when Ulfrik was scarred, felt a moment of vindictive glee.

  The meeting was interesting enough in its way. It was intended to make sure that each of the clan heads recognized each other's authority, and that there would be no eruptions of violence from any of the clans. Some of them were more inclined to war than others, and Tonna kept track of which ones were looking for an excuse to bite. She caught a few interested glances thrown her way as well, and though she guessed that many of those glances were mere curiosity over her trade goods and her loyalties, she also guessed that some of those had to do with the fact that she was unmarried. Inter-clan marriages were a little uncommon, but they were more likely when the clan heads were involved.