Wolf Hunting Page 5

  Powerful Tenderness had begun systematically stripping away vines and moving stray stones. Now he lumbered over and squatted next to her to inspect her find. Plik picked his way across to join them.

  "It looks like the edge of a wall," Plik agreed, "but which edge? Truth spoke of a northern wall. That implies three others."

  Firekeeper hunkered back, inspecting their surroundings. Unfortunately, the area was flat enough that the mass of the cellar could lie in either direction.

  "I think," she said, "that our best bet would be to trace this wall until it comes to a corner, then see which way the corner turns. If it turns south, then we have found our northern wall. If it turns north, however, we have more searching to do."

  "Can't we just clear the next wall," Powerful Tenderness asked, "maybe not fully, but enough to find our way?"

  'That's probably what we must do," Firekeeper said, "for without any sense of the dimensions of this cellar, we cannot simply pace off a distance and find the next wall. Still, I am hoping that this is the correct wall. Truth led us to this point. I am hoping her sense of direction was precise rather than general."

  "That's a big hope," Powerful Tenderness said, glancing over to where the jaguar crouched unseeing and un-moving in the shade of the largest tree he had been able to find.

  "It's all we have," Firekeeper said, and methodically got to work.

  Her persistence over the next several days would have surprised her human friends, all of whom viewed her as impulsive and impatient, but Firekeeper had not survived for the better part of a decade in the northwestern mountains only because of the loving care offered by the wolves.

  The wolves could keep her fed and relatively warm, but they could not do for Firekeeper the dozens of mind-numbing tasks that had been part of her daily routine. Just caring for the knife that had been her most important tool had taken discipline lest the blade rust or become dull.

  The wolves could tear into their food without regard, but Firekeeper must skin or scale hers. If she wished to save the hides - as she did whenever possible - then she must take care to preserve and treat them. Her knowledge of tanning had been rudimentary, so the hides had stiffened or rotted more quickly than they would have had she had the skills she now possessed. Therefore, she had been forced to make and remake her clothing.

  Fishing augmented the meals the wolves brought her, for unlike a wolf, Firekeeper could not eat once every few days and fast the rest. Nor could she thrive on meat close to rotting, as the wolves did. Then, too, she needed vegetable food. In summer this was fairly simple to find. In winter it meant digging through snow andIor breaking ice as did the deer and elk her people hunted.

  Yes. Firekeeper possessed ample patience when it suited her - just not for the things humans thought important and she thought rather foolish.

  As she methodically cleared accumulated matter from the top of the wall, she thought of these human friends. She had not seen much of them since soon after the falling of the Tower of Magic. Before the winter shut the ports, Derian had gone north again, and there Firekeeper understood he had taken part in the waltzing for precedence that humans called diplomacy.

  Derian had returned south to Liglim in the late spring, and Firekeeper had seen him a few times, but the lure of Misheemnekuru and the life she was making there - and the joy that for the first time in over three years apparently no one needed her to do anything except what she wanted to do - had kept her away from the mainland.

  Firekeeper felt a little guilty about this, but only a little. There were many humans with whom Derian could occupy himself, and apparently he was becoming quite important among them. He had his pack and she hers. Moreover, she had the promise of several ravens that should Derian come to harm, she would be told.

  As she dug, Firekeeper also wondered about this house that was not a house that they were now excavating. Why had someone gone to the trouble of building what Plik assured her must have been a massive and solid structure only to tear it down again and eliminate even the cellars? The longer she and her allies worked, the more it became apparent that the cellar into which Rascal had stumbled had been little more than a root cellar, and had probably been overlooked in the general effort to eliminate all traces of this building.

  Plik was not built well for digging. His hands were as clever as those of a human - or a raccoon. With them, he crafted a sort of sledge, and convinced Rascal to haul away the larger pieces of detritus. Then Plik joined Fire-keeper and Powerful Tenderness in clearing away vines and probing for wall edges.

  When he grew weary, for with his years Plik could not labor as steadily as the younger ones did, he inspected the scattered stonework. On the first night, he told them that some of the stones had fragments of writing on them.

  "It's an old dialect, not one I read easily. I have sent a copy of some of the fragments back to Center Island for translation. If none of the other beast-souled will come, I have asked for a loan of some of the dictionaries. Bitter assures me that between them a couple of the fish eagles can transport even a large book."

  "Can you read any of the writing at all?" Powerful Tenderness asked. "I would like to know what manner of place this was. I do not think it was a mere estate."

  "I can read a little," Plik said, "and I think you are right about this not being some estate. For one, I do not think that people, even then, so copiously inscribed the stones of their homes. I would guess this was a temple of some sort - but I cannot guess which of the deities were celebrated here."

  Firekeeper did her best to hide a shudder. There was ample evidence that the worship practiced by the forerunners of the modern theocracy of Liglim had involved blood sacrifice - and magic.

  THE BOOKS PLIK REQUESTED arrived on the third morning of their digging, but Plik did not have much time to spend piecing together stone fragments and translating their texts, for on that same day Firekeeper found a corner. To her delight, the angle turned south, seeming to confirm that Truth had led them to the northern wall.

  "We need to be sure, though," she said, "so while the rest of you start digging, Plik and I will make certain that we have the outline of this cellar."

  No one protested this division of labor. Blind Seer and Rascal were quite pleased to dig a ditch alongside the inner edge of the wall. Powerful Tenderness, who had brought a shovel blade in his pack and fashioned a handle as soon as digging was clearly in the offing, did deeper clearance. All took turns hauling away the accumulated detritus.

  Everyone kept watch over Truth, but it hardly seemed necessary. The Wise Jaguar lay in whatever shade in which she was put, ate when food was put directly under her nose, drank if her muzzle was pressed into fresh water. Otherwise, she did little but dream weird dreams, her paws twitching as she ran who knew where.

  By the fourth day, Firekeeper felt certain they had the correct wall and joined Powerful Tenderness in clearing away dirt. The huge maimalodalu did most of the actual digging, but Firekeeper shoveled dirt and stone onto the sledge that Rascal, and now Blind Seer hauled. It had been hard to convince the blue-eyed wolf to take his turn in the traces, but Firekeeper shamed him into the work, showing him her own bruised and blistered hands.

  "We are a pack, are we not?" she said, and although Blind Seer did not stop complaining about the indignity, he let Plik harness him up and hauled.

  On the fifth day, the soft dirt on the edge of their trench crumpled inward. Had Powerful Tenderness not been so tall, he would have been completely covered. As it was, he was buried right to his chin. Firekeeper uncovered him with all the haste care would permit. After that accident, some of the Wise Wing6d Folk brought heavy sailcloth that could be used along with cut saplings to hold back the dirt. By the sixth day they were ready to continue.

  On the seventh day, they found the door, and by that evening, with renewed enthusiasm, they had cleared its surface to the threshold. The door was sheathed in dark metal, unadorned but for some writing stamped into its surface. There was no knob, latch,
or keyhole - nothing at all to indicate how it should be opened.

  After the door was cleared, Plik very carefully made his way out onto the packed dirt and stone that still filled the bulk of the cellar. Pebbles and dry soil trickled into the trench.

  "Careful," Firekeeper warned.

  "I am being careful," Plik answered, proving this by very cautiously lowering his bulk so that his weight would be dispersed more evenly. "I want to see what's written on the door. It's the same old script I've been finding on the blocks. Now that I have the dictionaries, I think I can translate it."

  "Good," Firekeeper said, mollified. "Can you see the writing clearly enough? The sun is setting."

  "I inherited excellent night vision from both my parents," Plik said. "I can manage well enough to make a copy."

  Firekeeper found herself wondering who among the assorted beast-souled were Plik's parents - or if they were even alive, for Plik was clearly a mature creature. As no one of the maimalodalum looked unduly like any of the others, she couldn't even guess.

  Plik had brought a well-scraped piece of hide with him, and now he copied the inscription with a bit of charcoal. The scratching sound made Firekeeper's back prickle - at least that's what she told herself, refusing to admit her growing apprehension.

  " 'Silver,'" Plik murmured. 'That word is unchanged from what we use today. So is 'magic' 'Light' is an older form, but I'm sure that's what it means. There's something here about a cascade, but I can't figure out how that fits."

  " 'Cascade,' as in a waterfall, you mean?" asked Powerful Tenderness. He stood beside Firekeeper in the trench, inspecting the door but apparently having no better luck in discovering how to open it.

  "Something like that," Plik agreed, "but there seems to be something about 'detritus,' too. It doesn't help that the text is written in one of those archaic verse forms where it seems the author thought it was in bad taste to use verbs. I was never very good at those."

  Firekeeper listened, letting the words flow through the edges of her awareness. It occurred to her that, in nature, patterns in the dappling on the fawn's coat or the spots on a moth's wings often served to distract the eye from what was really there. She set her fingers to inspecting the surface of the door, looking for any irregularities that might not be visible to the naked eye. She traced every letter, seeing if it hid more than mere meaning, but found nothing.

  When she drew her hands back, she noticed that the pads of her fingers were blackened. When she licked one, the blackening didn't rinse clean, only smudged a bit. Powerful Tenderness noticed what she was doing and frowned.

  "Why are you licking yourself, Firekeeper?"

  "My fingers," she said, holding them to show him. The black marks were clear even in the fading light. 'The door made them filthy, but the marks do not come away easily." She spat. "Licking wasn't a good idea. My mouth tastes like metal."

  "Go drink some water," Powerful Tenderness said, but his attention was elsewhere. As Firekeeper climbed from the trench, she saw he had taken a bit of cloth from a pouch that hung at his waist and was using it to rub the metal.

  Water made most of the taste go away, and Firekeeper chased away the remainder with a few withered, late-season blackberries before returning. Powerful Tenderness was still rubbing the door, and even in the failing light Firekeeper could see that a section was lighter than the surrounding area.

  "The door is made from silver," Powerful Tenderness said in response to her query. "Something Plik said made me think it might be. What came off on your fingers was tarnish, not dirt."

  Firekeeper nodded. "Does this matter?"

  "It might," Powerful Tenderness replied. He seemed to notice the gathering darkness for the first time. "But this is not the time to worry about it. Plik, let me come up before you move again. If you spill a little dirt in after, it won't hit me."

  The raccoon-man didn't look up from his copying, but nodded. Firekeeper turned away, knowing work was done for the day, and looking forward to whatever Blind Seer and Rascal might have hunted up for her dinner. She was tired of rabbit. Maybe they would have taken a deer.

  MAGIC." "LIGHT." Those words hadn't changed too much over time. One verb gave Plik a great deal of trouble. It turned out to be an archaic form of "reflect," little in use these days.

  The minimalist verse style had been popular over a hundred years before Divine Retribution had sent the Old World rulers to whatever judgment the deities had ordained. Rather than making Plik's task easier, it made it less so, for even when Plik felt fairly certain he had all the words correctly translated, meaning still escaped him.

  Plik finished his translation that night when meals had been eaten and even the three wolves were settled near the fire - though all three sat with their backs to the flame lest their night vision be spoiled. Truth had no such qualms. The jaguar cuddled so close that the occasional spark guttered out in her fur.

  "So," Firekeeper said after a long silence, "what do you have?"

  "Have?" Plik replied blankly.

  "You haven't been writing for some time, but your eyes go up and down over the page. What do you have there that is so fascinating?"

  Plik chuckled. He felt a ridiculous urge to toss the paper in the fire rather than subject his efforts to that coolly assessing mind, but he knew he was being foolish.

  "I think I know what it says," he replied, "or rather, I have meanings for all the words, but I'm not sure in the least what it means."

  "Read it," Firekeeper said, her tone midway between a suggestion and an order.

  Plik couldn't think of any reason why he shouldn't, so he complied.

  Magic Light

  Silver Shine

  Reflect

  Back, then back, then back, then back

  Cascading concourse

  Bright shower

  Foaming tumult

  Carrying detritus

  Open way

  "Magic light?" Firekeeper said. "Reflecting? If reflecting magic light is what we need, then we must find some other way through. I wonder if we can cut silver?"

  "It depends on how thick it is," Powerful Tenderness said automatically, "and how pure. Pure silver is fairly soft as metals go. But it doesn't follow that we don't have magic light. Some of the light panels in the tower on Center Island still work. I suppose that is magic light."

  "But would those panels work if taken from the tower?" Plik objected. "Our experiments have shown otherwise. I don't think that could be the answer."

  "Why didn't whoever wrote that just say what needed to be done?" whined Rascal.

  "Why bury a door underground?" Blind Seer retorted. "There are times I think you might as well be Cousin-kind for all you use your mind. Whoever wrote those words didn't want them to be easy to understand, just as they didn't want that door to be easy to find. I know little of human buildings, but I recall certain things Firekeeper and I saw in New Kelvin. I am sure that even when the building here was standing - before it was flattened to the ground - this door was hidden."

  Plik nodded vigorously. "That idea goes well with what little I have been able to understand from the fragments of writing on the building stone. Many of the words seem to be warnings or cautions. This was not a place where the common resident would have been welcome."

  "So," Powerful Tenderness said, and Plik worried that the huge creature was angry that his idea had been so quickly dismissed. "If 'magic light' is not to be found in the panels at the towers, where do we find it?"

  "Or how do we cut the silver?" Firekeeper muttered, her words probably inaudible to any but Blind Seer, next to whom she sat, and to Plik, whose hearing was unexpectedly good given that his ears were rather small and furry.

  Plik ignored the wolf-woman - after all, she hadn't been addressing him. "I've been thinking about the original word used for 'magic' I translated it as an adjective modifying 'light.' There seemed to be justification in a parallel to the next line."

  He heard a faint growl that he was fairly certain ca
me from Firekeeper and hastened on.

  'The language is archaic. Forms have changed. What if instead of it being 'magic light,' it is 'Magic's light'?"

  The two foreigners looked as baffled as ever, but Rascal yelped happily, "Moonlight! The Moon is Magic's body, and so moonlight would be magic's light."

  Firekeeper nodded. "I remember your people's old tales. That makes sense. So this begins to work. Moonlight, reflected, will open the way."

  "Not so fast," Blind Seer said. "How then do you explain all of this about reflecting back and back?"

  Firekeeper shrugged, but Powerful Tenderness answered.

  "If the door is silver, then it would reflect back light cast upon it. However, somehow the light must be handled so that it reflects repeatedly. I can see doing that with sunlight, but with something as weak as moonlight?"

  They sat in silence, contemplating.

  "There will be a full moon in a few days," Firekeeper said at last. "The moonlight will be strongest then. We should at least try."

  Plik stared up at the waxing moon. "I wonder how the ones who built this door managed to get moonlight into a cellar?"

  "Maybe that's why the inscription hints at using mirrors," Powerful Tenderness said. "There could have been a window into the cellar."

  "It's all very strange," Plik said. "I know we came here to let Truth out, but what is this door? Why was it built here? How did Truth - or some part of Truth - come to be on the other side?"

  Rascal cut in, repeating his earlier question. "And why make it so hard to understand the inscription? I know what Blind Seer said - that it was meant to be hard to understand, just like the door was meant to be hard to find - but why?"

  Firekeeper shifted uneasily. "Rabbits and foxes alike hide the entrances to their dens so that they will always be able to escape, but this does not seem to be of the same order. This seems like a door that is not meant to be opened except with great difficulty."

  Plik knew that Firekeeper had been raised by Royal Wolves, and that the Royal Beasts had as great an aversion to magic as did their northern human counterparts - an amusing parallel, since in all other things the Royal Beasts viewed themselves as in opposition to the humans. Still, Firekeeper surely had heard stories from the old days when magic was still common - and was used by those who ruled humans and annihilated Beasts with equal cruelty.