A ravvit jumped squealing into the snare. Huntress Skyfire started out of a drowse, shaken by the fact that sleep had taken her unaware. Quickly she studied the light. The sun's rays slanted just slightly lower; her attention had lapsed only minutes. Stretching stiffened muscles, the Chieftess arose and drew her dagger. She killed the ravvit with one deft thrust, but resisted the instinct to gorge. With the blood of fresh game on her hands, she set out to share meat with Song.
Her approach to the grotto was cautious as before, but the slight increase in moisture as the day waned made the scent carry. Blood-smell aroused the sleeping predator from his dreams of chase and the hunt. Skyfire heard the click of claws on rock as the great wolf bounded to his feet. She felt the gust of his breath as he sampled the air, then greeted her presence with a low growl of warning.
The Huntress froze instandy, ravvit flesh dripping between her fingers. She made no further move, but waited at the entrance to the cleft for Song to consider her gift.
The wolf made no effort to advance. Skyfire accepted his ambivalence in stride; she had expected no less. Wolves were distrustful by nature, and interactions between members of a pack were rigidly dictated by rank. She had bested Song, and by tradition, he could fill his belly only after she had gorged and lost interest. To share food without regard for hierarchy upset the order Song understood; and things not understood were to be feared.
Skyfire sensed the wolf's uneasiness. She held firm, even as his hackles rose, and a snarl furrowed his muzzle. Shining gray against the dimmer gray shadow of his head, the eyes of the wolf never left her.
**Song.** Skyfire put sending in the word. She offered reassurance in place of uneasiness, warmth in place of cold, food against the pain of hunger. She promised joy, and life, and the heady thrill of the hunt in full summer.
Song's snarl intensified. He remembered the past fight. That had ended with his throat bared to her mercy. His instinct was submission, but the close rock walls confined him, cut off his escape if this Huntress pressed her proven superiority against him. The ravvit promised nothing. The smell of its blood only drove the wolf to frustration, for he was hungry, yet dared not feed. Enraged by conflicting instincts, Song crouched on the hair-trigger edge of a spring.
'Song,' Skyfire whispered. She shifted her weight slightly to ease a cramped leg; and that small movement tripped the balance.
Song lunged. Wild with fear, crazed to escape, he leapt for the elf in the entryway.
Skyfire could have dodged aside, let the wolf brush past to win freedom. But the name of the Dreamsinger's killer was a threat more dire than mauling. Her tribesmates must not run with a murderer unknown in their midst.
Tired, and slowed by hunger, Skyfire met Song's rush with braced feet. His weight slammed her, hips and shoulder, and his jaws snapped closed on her wrist. The pain was terrible. His teeth ripped down into muscle, and grated with bruising force against bone. Skyfire yelled, in part to distract him, but also to vent the shock and the agony of a wound that wrung her mind with faintness. Just enough awareness remained for her to hammer a fist at the wolfs gray eyes, Dreamsinger's eyes, shining now with the lust to tear and kill.
Song released her before the blow fell. He would not risk his sight; nor could he entirely forget his former defeat at the hands of this same elf. He had attacked, but she had neither given way nor succumbed to fear; either reaction would have invited further aggression. Yet since the elf met challenge with a savage intent to fight, Song backed down. Snarling, he lowered his brush and retreated to the farthest cranny of the lair.
Skyfire knelt, her shoulder pressed weakly to cold stone. The ravvit lay where it had fallen in the dirt between her knees. She cradled her injured forearm in her hand, wrung dizzy by the odors of fresh-killed meat and new blood. Somehow, through pain, she clung to her purpose. She must not leave the grotto, must not permit Song an opening to leave. The safety of her unborn cub depended on her steadiness now.
Teeth clenched, Skyfire worked off her tunic. She wrapped her wrist to slow the bleeding. She knew from past mishaps and remembered scoldings from Rellah: slashes were the least of her worries. More serious were the narrow purple punctures which cut deep, but did not drain. Without herbs to draw out the poison, these were sure to fester, slow her with sickness and fever until she lost her strength and died.
Dreamsinger's fall from the cliff had been a much cleaner end.
Skyfire squeezed her eyes closed. Such thoughts had no place, except to obscure one fear behind another far more dire. She had but one purpose: to win the murderer's name from Song before her tribe's future came to grief. Cautiously the chieftess shoved to her feet. Her shoulder scraped the rough stone, but she needed the support to rise, to stand straight as if she still had spirit to call challenge. Let Song once gain the impression that she could not fight, and the contest of wills was lost. At the slightest hint of helplessness, the wolf would attack and press for victory.
With a low growl of warning, Skyfire carefully, so very carefully, stepped back. She waited then, though dizziness skewed her balance. Song did not react. Skyfire clung to the stone. She thought of the Dreamsinger's music, now forever stilled; the anger that went with that memory helped to support her through another step, then still more slowly, another. Song watched, but offered no aggression.
Beyond the mouth of the grotto, the sun shone red in the treetops. The heat had eased, but Skyfire sweated in discomfort. Left no other alternative, she knelt at the entrance to Song's lair and trailed her injured forearm in the spring.
The icy water eased the ache and cleared her head enough for her to notice the emptiness in her belly. The meat dropped in the lair was lost. As twilight fell gray over the forest, she heard the sharp crunch of bones in the jaws of the wolf who had bitten her. Song had grown bold enough to appease his hunger on the ravvit. Skyfire wondered how long before he became restless, or desperate, or thirsty to the point where he challenged once again for his freedom.
Darkness brought stars and heavy dew. The sultry heat of day gave way to light breezes; frogs croaked in chorus with the crickets. Skyfire lay and listened to the night woods, her wrist soaking in the spring. Pain would not let her sleep. Light-headed with exhaustion, she reviewed each member of the tribe in her mind. Most were friends; all but the very oldest were forest-cunning, wise, and dependable in the hunt. All had shared through lean times, and bickered over trivia when there was plenty. True enough, there were factions, brittle tensions left over from Two-Spear's time. But the turn of the seasons had dimmed the old distrusts. Skyfire had taken pains never to show favor; always in council she had listened to any rider who spoke out. The fights over Dreamsinger's presence had caused the only open dispute since her chieftainship began.
Skyfire curled her fingers in the current, and winced. The pain of the bite had not lessened. The swelling had increased to the point where she could not effectively grip her knife or spear. Even the simple snare she had woven that morning lay beyond her dexterity. The Huntress rested her sweating forehead against the earth. Help and the holt were beyond call. Yet even the threat of starvation could not turn Skyfire from her quest. That the hopes she had discovered through Recognition should be left at risk to a murderer offered hurt far worse than any wound. Song alone held the answer; only the wolf could reveal which friend, which Wolfrider, which elf under her trust still harbored enough hatred to deceive.
New day dawned humid and close. Birds flitted from the treetops to drink at the spring, but Skyfire could only follow their flight with her eyes. Song was awake and pacing. Fretful herself, Skyfire tried and failed to find a more comfortable position. Her arm had swollen to the point where only the icy water in the pool offered any relief. Her pain could be tolerated as long as she kept the wound submerged.
By noon, the sun fell full on the rocks. Song lay panting in the shadows, eyes fixed ceaselessly on the elf who kept him penned. Skyfire dipped water from the spring in a fold of her leather tunic. She offered to shar
e with the wolf, but Song declined with a growl; irritable, restless, he arose and paced his-prison.
Skyfire sweated with her back against the boulders. Reflections off the water hurt her eyes, and the wind which gusted through the treetops rushed unpleasantly against ears that rang with fever. Sickness only increased her determination. Periodically Skyfire checked the lair. Sometimes she saw the Dreamsinger's silver eyes, watching in silence from the grotto. Other times she saw only a silver-pelted wolf, vicious and surly with frustration.
'Who killed you?' she raged in delirium.
The wolf flinched away from the sudden croak of her words; the Dreamsinger refused to give answer.
Skyfire tossed fitfully. She dreamed in the throes of fever that fish with the teeth of predators came to gnaw at her hand. She awoke, screaming with pain, and faced the fearful certainty that her arm had festered from the bite. Rellah was going to be angry; except that Rellah and her bags of smelly herbs were too far distant to help. The thought somehow seemed funny, that the sour old female might wind up scolding bones. Skyfire laughed outright, while thunder growled, and a late afternoon storm showered rain on her head.
Lightning flashed, throwing white-edged reflections into the lair. The Dreamsinger's eyes followed her, shining gray in the shadows. 'You're dead,' Skyfire muttered, mad with torment and fever, 'I will die, your cub will die, and an elf who kills other elves will shelter like a snake in the pack.'
Her ravings were absorbed by forest stillness. Twilight darkened around dripping trees. Skyfire lay on her back in the mud, talking to stars that shone through sooty drifts of cloud. They did not bring her Sapling, as she asked; neither did they intercede to prevent the dream that racked her over and over: a staggering step into air, and a fall that ended in blood and pain on the rocky bank of a stream.
Night deepened, and another sort of darkness blanketed Skyfire's thoughts, until even suffering lay beyond feeling.
* * *
She awakened, ice-cold, and shivering uncontrollably. Night had gone gray with new dawn, and the wind carried promise of heavy rain. Skyfire opened her eyes. Weakly she attempted to sit up.
Hard hands shoved her back, crashed her bruisingly onto stone. The impact shot pain from her injury clear down her arm to her shoulder. Shock knocked the breath from her lungs. Through a sucking tide of darkness, she saw a face, and tangled hair, and a raggedy, leather-clad elf. His features were familiar. Through dizziness, Skyfire strove to remember.
'Stonethrower?' she murmured; and vertigo fell sharply away before memory. This elf was an outsider, an exile, not among the faces of friends who shared the howls at the holt. Fear followed, thick enough to choke: Stonethrower had gone off with Two-Spear, his parting words an oath of undying vengeance for the plight which had befallen his chief at Skyfire's hands.
'You!' said Skyfire, recognizing through touch the memory of a sending that had ended in a fatal fall, it was you who pushed my mate from the ledge!'
Stonethrower did not speak. But the flash of the stone knife he raised above her body offered answer enough. He had returned only to kill her.
Skyfire rolled clumsily aside.
'Whelp of a starved she-wolf!' Stonethrower jerked her back. 'You won't escape. You've strayed too far for sending to reach the others. They'll have no warning from you when I return and kill them, one by one, until there is no tribe left.'
Strong and cruel and crazy, Stonethrower caught her hair, twisted her head to bare her neck to his knife.
Skyfire thrashed. Her reactions were muddled from fever, and sickness left her too weak to evade the blow. Still, she fought. Aside from threat to her tribe, her death would take the life of the cub within her belly, and the legacy of old magic bequeathed by the Dreamsinger might perish unborn. Frustration, grief, and an overwhelming sense of terror shaped a cry to a mate who was beyond all answer.
**KYR!**
Skyfire's sending framed the Dreamsinger's essence, just as Stonethrower struck downward.
A leaping streak of silver flew between. Song launched from the cave mouth with a growl of animal rage. He recognized the smell of his master's murderer, and Skyfire's sending rang over and over with echoes of the Dreamsinger's presence. Song's sense of loyalty blurred. He leapt for the hated attacker, bristling with a rending lust to kill.
Stonethrower sensed only movement; then the great wolf's charge overtook him. Committed to his thrust at the chieftess, he barely turned his head when the silver male's weight knocked him down. Jaws found his exposed throat and closed over gristle and windpipe with force enough to crush. Stonethrower dropped the knife. He never heard the splash as his weapon sank in the spring. His heels battered uselessly into stone as the wolfs jaws tightened and worried him, shaking elf flesh until the last scent of life was extinguished.
In time, Song tired of the corpse. He dropped it a short distance off in the forest, shook his pelt straight, and returned to lap at the spring. Once his thirst was satisfied, he raised his dripping muzzle and sniffed the dawn air for game sign. A moan from behind made him turn.
The she-elf lay where she had fallen. The hand outflung from her body smelled overpoweringly of hurt. The wolf whined. A presence was missing from his side. Restless now, Song trotted a few steps back and forth. The scent in his nostrils meant trouble; the hunter who should partner him lay wounded. Drawn by the mystery of pack instinct, the silver creature stepped close, crouched down, and began to lick the still fingers of the elf-hand.
He still worked at the task past sunrise, when Wolfriders burst from the trees.
'She's here!' called Skimmer to the others. Rising wind and clouds heavy with rain served only to increase his concern. 'Our chieftess is hurt. Sapling, run and fetch Rellah.'
Song poised, ready on an instant to run, to abandon the tie so tenuously forged in the night. But a familiar pack surrounded him, and the habit of companionship was strong. As the Wolfriders hurried to succor their chieftess, Song raised his head. Holding ground at his elf-friend's shoulder, he growled challenge to any who might dare to interfere.
The Renders
Stars flecked the sky when Jaiddon reached the headland that sheltered the town of Fisherman's Cove from the sea. Every turn in the deserted road showed the Pattern which secured all Shape on the Isle of Circadie against the Void. Delicate as knotted gilt thread in the failing light, its interlocking tracery of force was visible in the veins of the leaves, the curve of the hills, even the dry sand of the shoreline which stood against the tireless rush of the sea.
Beyond the headland lay a scene of devastation. As though smashed by a fallen sky, the town lay splintered in ruins. The sight struck the breath from Jaiddon's lungs. Not even the boats in the harbor had been spared. The beach glittered with the silvery, crescent corpses of a skip-jack's dismembered hold. Smooth sand lay sundered by a ragged gap that passed clean through the shore. Ocean swells rolled through the breach, unimpeded by shallows or shoreline, and on the other side, the land where people had once raised homes lay twisted beyond memory of patterned Shape.
Jaiddon could count the bodies. Trained since childhood, he could see the snarled remains of the patterns that held their spirits in life.
Air sobbed into his throat. Renders had undone an entire town as though its existence was no more solid than morning mist. Jaiddon hardly felt the path beneath his feet as he stumbled over the dunes. The Renders had gone on into the hills. Their trail would not be hard to follow, marked as it was with wreckage.
Anger and hatred gripped Jaiddon in the shadow of that levelled town. Would all of Circadie be undone, as Fisherman's Cove, until her tortured rings lost power and slumped into the sea? Jaiddon bunched the hands whose promise had set him against the Renders into fists. Perhaps if he released the solidity of the ground where the cursed beings stood, he could drop them into the deep. Certainly, that had never been tried. The Masters, all, were bound by oath to preserve the Pattern.
Jaiddon showed his teeth in an expression not quite
a smile. He might wear a Master's Colors, but he had sworn no such oath.
Over and over, he was impressed by Circadie's vulnerability until, half blinded by tears of frustration, he was sorry he had not refused the Master's request.
He still found it difficult to believe the bedridden cripple he had faced that afternoon was the Master Shaper of Circadie. The Master whom Jaiddon had always known was a tall, ruddy man, black-haired and full of humor. His hands had been strong and capable, nothing like the warped, skeletal claws Jaiddon had seen trembling on the coverlet. And the face! Jaiddon flinched with horror at the memory of features deformed beyond all recognition.
Yet the eyes in the deep, crumpled sockets had opened. They were still yellow, not yet devoid of the life that once shaped the cycles of Circadie with such enviable confidence.
'I am blind, Jaiddon, though within, I can still Shape your memory,' the Master said. The light eyes closed. The ruined face smoothed as an image of a white-robed, barefoot novice with sparely muscled bones and hair the color of brass formed behind seamed lids. 'Jaiddon, there are Renders in the land.'
The Master's words drove a sharp spike of fear through Jaiddon's thoughts. Few could stand against the power of Renders, outsiders whose disbelief could unravel Shape like a tear in knitted wool. Not even the Pattern of Solidity, foundation of all Circadie, was secure against the destruction such a mind could unleash. Blind and deaf to all but Reality, two of them had once blundered through an entire forest without perceiving the fragile power that held its existence against the Void. Everything they touched was destroyed, reduced in a moment to the flotsam from which it had been created.
'The Renders number three,' the Master Shaper said, snapping Jaiddon's paralyzed shock. 'They are shipwreck victims, dazed and delirious with thirst. Megallie thinks they are mad. Certainly, they are strong, stronger than any Render who has ever challenged the Solidity of Circadie. We are desperate, Jaiddon. That is why you have been summoned.'