“I didn’t belong where you found me,” said Corry. “I belong here, in this world—Panamindorah.” He had not known the word when he started, but it came to him as he spoke.
Capricia seemed unimpressed. “Then why did I find you in the other place?”
“I don’t know. I was found by…people in that world, and they took care of me for…a year, perhaps. I’ve lost my memory. Can you understand that? It was taken from me somehow. Your language, the names of places, the fauns—it all seems familiar. I even remembered the names of the moons last night. The little yellow moon is called the Runner or sometimes the Wolf’s Eye, and the red moon is the Dragon.”
“Yes,” said Capricia. “Dragon Moon, Demon Moon—full last night. The superstitious would consider that an omen. The soldiers probably mentioned it to you on your way here.”
Corry shook his head. “No one told me.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me the name and color of the other moon, the one that was not up last night.”
Corry put a hand to his head. Yes, there is another. After a pause, he shook his head. “I can’t remember.”
Capricia did not seem surprised. “How did you get here?”
“I was in the grove where you found me, and I fell asleep. I had been trying to play the music that I heard before I saw you. When I woke up and started walking towards the house, I was nearly knocked down by a group of fauns on deer-back and some big cats chasing them. I followed their tracks into Panamindorah.”
“Regrettable,” said Capricia. “The music seems to work both ways. Perhaps it has bewitched you. You think you belong here, but you don’t, and you must go back.”
“No.”
Capricia laughed. “You can’t say ‘no’ to me. I am the crown princess and civil regent. I can have you imprisoned. I can decide that Syrill was right.”
“Yes, but you can’t send me back.” He watched her for a moment. “No one else knows, do they? It’s your secret. If you try to make me do something, I can show your guards the flute, as much as it can be shown. They’ll have to believe me.”
Capricia turned pale—mostly, Corry thought, with anger. “You can’t blackmail me!” But she truly did not know how to answer him.
While she simmered, he let his eyes stray to the desk. He was standing almost against it, and a battered volume lay open beside him, partially burned, with the ancient, blackened pages crumbling around the edges. The city had a double outer wall, so that archers might harry any enemy who gained access to the first ring. Watch towers were set at—
“What are you doing?” snapped Capricia.
Corry glanced up. He’d unconsciously run a finger along the words. “This book looks old. Is this about the flute?”
Capricia’s lip curled. “You can’t read that.”
He read it to her. After half a page, she interrupted him. “The meaning of that writing has been lost for a hundred years. You cannot read it.”
Corry cocked an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m making it up—all that business about walls and towers? I can’t explain it to you, but I can read this. What city is it talking about?”
“Selbis.”
“Where is that?”
Capricia said nothing.
After a moment, Corry asked, “Why did you try to get rid of the flute?”
When it became clear that she would not answer, Corry glanced down at the book. “I could help you translate it.”
“No.” Capricia crossed the small room in two strides and shut the old book. Her bright, brown eyes bored into his. “Corry—”
“My name is Corellian.”
He thought he saw her flinch. “Corellian, if you have any honor or compassion or reason, listen to me: the flute is evil. Its music has bewitched you. Take the flute back to your own world where you belong and it can do no harm.”
Corry felt sorry for her, but he would not agree. “These feelings and memories and ideas were in my head before I ever touched the flute. I won’t go back.”
Capricia’s eyes flashed. Corry could tell she was used to being obeyed and certainly was not used to making an entreaty and being refused. “Very well. Stay. Someone will kill you within a year without my protection. Shelts here do not love iterations.”
“What is an iteration?”
“The misbegotten offspring of wizards and shelts.” Capricia was thinking. “Corry, I can have you killed by those who will not give you time for conversation. I can take the flute and make a better disposal. Your choice is simple. Go back or die.”
“Tonight?” Corry indicated the late afternoon shadows.
“In the morning. You may stay the night.”
“If I can’t change your mind by tomorrow, I’ll go…if you will tell me some things about your world.”
Capricia looked wary, but nodded.
“What is a shelt?”
“Anything in Panamindorah that has a face like ours and walks on two legs is either a shelt, a wizard, or an iteration. But wizards and iterations are rare or extinct.”
“But if iterations are extinct, why did Syrill think that I was one? And how is a shelt different from a faun?”
Capricia opened her mouth, then closed it. “On second thought, there’s no reason for me to tell you these things. I think I have been more than generous in allowing you to stay the night, and now I must explain you to my father. We will leave as soon as possible in the morning.”
* * * *
“King Meuril will see you now,” said a sentry.
Corry and Capricia stood in a circular antechamber. Slanting windows curved around the domed ceiling, letting in cascades of sunlight. Two grand staircases ran up the walls on either side of the room, and a balcony overhung the center. As they stepped into the throne room proper, Corry was dazzled by the variety of plants and the play of sunlight skipping off green-veined marble. The throne itself was a massive wooden seat with carved antlers spreading above it.
The king was not sitting on the throne, but pacing the room with several other fauns. Corry caught sight of Syrill and wondered whether they were discussing his upcoming interrogation. A moment later, he knew the idea was sheer vanity. Syrill was a general and must have more important things to discuss with his king.
As they drew nearer, Capricia took the lead. “A moment of your time, my lord.”
The king moved away from his councilors. Syrill’s eyes flicked over Corry and away, and Corry knew that he’d been dismissed as an item of little importance. Close-to, Meuril looked frail in his rich green robes. He was bald, but had a thick froth of gray hair around his temples and small, keen eyes of the same color. “Capricia, what is this business about an iteration?”
“Father, allow me to introduce Corellian, an orphan from a village in the far west. On our last journey to those provinces I spoke with him and promised him refuge here because of the ill treatment he received from the fauns on account of his iteration blood. Recently wolflings attacked and burned his settlement. Corry alone escaped. He has journeyed far to reach us, trying to enter faun villages, but they rejected him because he does not look like a shelt.”
The king studied Corry, and his face softened. “I, of all shelts, ought to appreciate such a loss. My realm extends its condolences. How old are you, Corellian?”
Corry thought a moment. I suppose it won’t do to say I don’t know. “Fourteen, Sire.”
Meuril smiled. “An excellent age to become an apprentice and adopt a trade.” He paused. “You are strangely dressed, friend. Is it so different where you come from?”
“Very different.”
Meuril nodded. “You may stay here as a guest of the princess until you find other lodging. If you have difficulties with my citizens, we will help you in what ways we can.”
A servant appeared at Meuril’s summons, but Capricia stepped forward. “Father, I will show him to a room.”
* * * *
“I don’t like lying to your father,” said Corry as Capricia o
pened the door to a guestroom.
“It was necessary.”
Corry glanced at her. “Who are you afraid of? What would it matter if everyone in Panamindorah knew about the flute?”
“Hush! I told you, the hall is not the place to discuss this. And until tomorrow, I’ll take that.” She stepped forward suddenly, reached into his pocket, and took the flute. Then she shut the door, and Corry heard the click of a lock.
Chapter 5. An Introduction to Wolflings
In view of the rapacious nature of the wolfling pack known as the Raiders, I, Meuril Sor, declare the usual bounty of three white cowries tripled for any wolf known to belong to a Raider, and the usual bounty of five white cowries increased to twenty speckled cowries for the capture or proven death of Fenrah Ausla. The bounty will be fifteen speckled cowries for the wolflings Sham Ausla, Sevn of Ivernees, Xerous of Palamine, Lyli of Palamine, Talis of Ivernees, Danzel, Hualien, or any additional members of the Raider pack.
—Book of Bounty Laws, edict by Meuril Sor, Summer 1697
Corry woke to birdsong and a cascade of sunlight streaming through his window. Capricia! He had been angry the night before—as much at himself for reaching into his pocket earlier as at Capricia for taking the flute—but now he felt only a vague panic. In the morning light, he could see that his window opened several stories above a landscaped courtyard. Corry gauged the distance to the ground, but decided that a jump would hurt him.
Fauns had brought him supper and a bath the night before, and he saw that they’d left him breakfast this morning. Corry dressed quickly, helping himself to the tray of fruit and bowl of deer’s milk. Without much hope, he tried the door…and the handle turned. Whoever brought my breakfast must have forgotten to lock it.
Corry opened the door and stepped into the empty hall. He made his way through the airy, sunlit passages, trying to remember the route Capricia had taken. He met an occasional faun, but no one stopped him. A few songbirds were beginning to flit playfully in and out of the rooms when he found a row of tapestries that he remembered. I’m near the throne room.
Corry hurried on, having some vague idea that he would talk to the king and tell him the truth. He soon came out of a passage and saw the silver banister and the staircase descending into the huge antechamber. As he started down, a faun holding a drawn sword burst through one of the doors below and bounded up the stairs.
The stranger was wearing a white tunic and purple cape. He was much paler than the other fauns Corry had seen. His curling, golden hair fell to his shoulders, and as he swept past, Corry caught a glint of blue eyes. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, he raced to the first window, put his hoof on the sill, and stretched out as far out as he could reach. Corry saw that he had curly white fur. “The roof! Hurry!”
A dozen other pale, blond fauns charged up the stairs. Corry pressed himself against the banister as they whisked past to follow the first, who had already disappeared. A memory stirred. They’re a different kind of faun. It annoyed him that he could not identify them.
Corry started walking more quickly and reached the foot of the stairs. As he moved across the antechamber towards the throne room, he caught faint sounds from outside—shouts and the ringing of bells. This is very odd.
Then a shadow appeared in a patch of sunlight at his feet. He glanced up and was slapped in the face by the descending end of a rope. As he watched, someone dropped out of one of the windows around the dome and began to shimmy down. The sun was in his eyes, and he could not see the climber clearly. About three-fourths of the way down, the shelt let go and jumped, rolling away from Corry with a clatter of steel. Corry blinked at the sword.
The newcomer was two-legged and had tufted ears, but she was certainly no faun. She had large paws rather than hooves. Silver gray hairs flecked the cinnamon brown fur of her legs, and a thick, bushy tail bristled behind her. Her breath came quick and hard.
Something clicked in Corry’s mind. He remembered how Capricia had explained him to her father. She said that wolflings burned my village. This is a wolfling, a wolf shelt. Capricia is a deer shelt. That fellow in the purple cape is a sheep shelt. I remember!
Corry held out his hands. “I’m unarmed,” he said.
“Stay still,” she rasped. She wore a sleeveless brown tunic, and a thin sword belt. Corry thought she looked no older than he and perhaps younger. Her eyes might have been golden, but now they were almost black, the pupils dilated with fear.
BANG! Doors flew open. Fauns poured down both staircases, while archers drew their weapons along the balcony. Fauns with swords and bows swarmed around the perimeter of the room. Corry caught sight of the faun with the purple cape.
The wolfling’s eyes darted in one direction and then another.
Someone on the balcony shouted, “Don’t shoot!” It was Capricia. She was glaring at Corry, but she continued. “You’ll kill my guest!”
“Then tell him to get out of the way...” murmured Purple Cape.
Suddenly the wolfling bolted toward the only remaining exit—the main door of the castle. Fauns charged along the perimeter of the wall like giant pincers closing. Corry let out a long breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. A few arrows sang over his head and clattered along the floor, but none struck the fleeing wolfling.
For a moment Corry thought she would escape, but just as she reached the main doors they flew open. The wolfling was running too fast to stop, and she all but collided with the first faun through the door. Their swords were singing before anyone could intervene.
The faun was Syrill. His hooves made little clicking noises as he ducked and dodged, the green feather of his hat dancing like an excited bird. The wolfling was obviously outmatched, and he pushed her steadily backwards.
The fauns had now formed a complete ring around the fighters. No escape. Soon Syrill was fighting right next to the dangling rope. Corry saw the end twitch. He shouted, but no one was listening. The next instant Syrill hit the ground, struck by a wolfling who had slid partway down the rope and leapt on him from above. The two rolled over in a blur of brown and gray.
They came to a stop, crouching. The wolfling had an arm around Syrill’s chest and a sword against his throat. Syrill’s sword had been knocked from his grasp.
The new wolfling was male and looked at least ten years older than the female. “Up,” he breathed and jerked Syrill to his feet. “Talis?”
“Sir?” answered the girl-wolfling, still watching the crowd.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
The male wolfling nodded. “Walk.” He pushed a rigid Syrill toward the door, but fauns blocked his way. “Move!” he shouted. Some of the darker-skinned fauns obeyed, but not the pale strangers. The wolfling whirled to the faun in the purple cape. “Tell them to get out of my way, or I’ll kill him.”
The faun’s jaw was working, and he took a step forward. The wolfling pressed his sword hard enough against Syrill’s throat to draw a trickle of blood. “I’m not bluffing, Chance.”
“Move.” The faun called Chance growled the word. “Get out of his way.” His furious eyes returned to the wolfling. “I’ll have your pelt, Sham. But first I’ll hang you from the highest scaffold in Panamindorah.”
The wolfling ignored him and moved toward the doors. He was having some trouble with Syrill. Talis circled round to guard Sham’s back. Suddenly, Chance leapt forward, and his sword met Talis’s with a clash. She parried with such force that he staggered and her momentum carried her briefly into the crowd. The next thing Corry knew, he was stumbling backward with one arm twisted painfully behind him. He saw Chance backing away uncertainly. “Sham,” came Talis’s voice behind Corry’s head, “we’ve got another.”
The instant they were clear of the castle’s portico, the wolflings broke into a run. Corry could hear the shouts of pursuing fauns. Wolflings afoot would have been no match for mounted fauns, and Corry felt a flutter of hope. Then two enormous wolves shot across the plaza. They were
as large as small ponies. The teeth flashing in their panting mouths were as long as Corry’s fingers. Corry dug in his heels, and Talis had to drag him the last few yards.
Sham was still having difficulty with Syrill, who kept lashing out with his hooves, twisting, biting, and shouting. At last Sham struck him on the head with the flat of his sword. Syrill staggered. Sham hoisted him onto the back of a wolf, then leapt up behind. Talis’s wolf came up behind Corry, tipped its nose between his legs, and stood, letting Corry slide neatly onto its back.
Bells were ringing all over the city as the wolves left the castle complex. They fled through Laven-lay, making use of the parks and gardens. Talis pulled something like twine from her pack as they road and made a swift slip-knot around Corry’s wrists, tying them in front. Her own hands were shaking, her breathing ragged against the back of his neck. She jerked the knot painfully tight.
At some point Corry realized that a third wolf and rider had joined them. She was older than Talis and her dirty blond hair hung down her back in a tail as bushy as any wolf’s. “Danzel?” she growled.
“I know,” muttered Sham. “He almost got Talis killed, and now we have hostages.”
The new wolfling eyed Syrill in a way that made Corry’s hair prickle. “Kill them.”
Sham shook his head. “Not Syrill. Not without Fenrah’s consent.”
“Then leave them.”
Sham shook his head. “We might need them again. This isn’t over.”
Corry saw the white outer wall of the city rising out of the trees ahead. Then branches slapped him in the face as the wolves plowed into a thicket. They stopped abruptly, and Corry saw a freshly excavated tunnel, the brush beaten down around it.
Sham sprang from his wolf and pulled Syrill to the ground. He threw away the faun’s sword belt. As Corry watched, Sham rifled through the pockets of Syrill’s tunic. He stopped suddenly and held up something small and silvery, then shoved it into his own pocket.
A new wolfling scrambled out of the tunnel. “We’re almost ready down here. Lyli said that you have an unconscious faun. I’ve arranged transport.”
“Sevn, have you seen Danzel?”
The new wolfling shook his head. “What’s wrong?”