The Blood of Ten Chiefs (7 page)

Healing had pushed her deep within the wolf-song and she had not, in fact, taken note of the growing discontent. Nor, more importantly, had she noticed the shifting alliances among the first-born. Sharpears wasn't waiting for her anymore; Laststar stood close beside him. Likewise Treewalker and Frost had paired.

The birth of Selnac's daughter had forced a resolution to the mating tensions that had been slowly building since the hunt's departure. The first-born had made their choices and the elves—if Talen and Selnac's closeness meant anything, or Samael and Chanfur, standing hand-in-hand. The patterns her father had left to break were being perpetuated, and she had missed it all, lost in the timelessness of the wolf-song.

"All right, we'll move, then." She shook her arm free of the sling that held it motionless above her waist. "We'll go south, where the deer are—and the five-fingered hunters who killed so many of the high ones." She turned to Samael, giving him a hard, commanding look. **It's time to remember,** she sent.

Tension snapped and re-formed itself. Mention of the savage five-fingered hunters brought the first-born out of wolfsong. They did not want to remember what had happened at the sky-mountain; the elves dreaded reliving it. But Samael found his trove of winter-dried fruits and counted them carefully into a basket. He glanced at the She-Wolf, hoping she'd reconsider her command, but her eyes remained hard and he took the first three berries.

They remembered the slaughter, the terror, and the years of panicked running that had taken them far from the sky-mountain and cast them adrift in this world with only Timmain's now-lost wisdom to guide them. To be sure, Timmorn had led them back to the forest from the frozen flatlands farther north, but he had stopped among the trees that remained ever green and refused to go closer to the five-fingers' territories.

Then, when the remembering was over but the power of the berries yet remained, the She-Wolf challenged her tribe. She thrust the dangers of their journey deep into the wolfsong itself. Here in the ever green forest they were the most canny hunters, but there, where the deer had gone, they would live in five-fingered shadows.

The elves would have abandoned the idea; they would have accepted starvation or an eternity of fish-and-vermin chowder. The first-born writhed inwardly with their refreshed memories but the wolf-song did demand red meat and did not cower away from danger.

"We will leave," the She-Wolf told them all, "when we have smoked enough fish to last us eight days' walking." Then, her arm throbbing, she returned to her fur-mound and went to sleep.

They left after four smoke-filled days of preparation. The She-Wolf spent much of that time sending her thoughts deep into the forest. It was a futile quest and the wolf-song, she knew, would absorb any guilt or ill-feelings she might have over leaving Timmorn and the hunt behind, but so long as the deliberate activity of breaking up the camp kept the wolfsong submerged she had to keep trying.

She should have told them to prepare a month's worth of food—or none at all. Their supposed eight-day supply was gone when the cave was only four days behind them. No one, not even the She-Wolf herself, had imagined how hungry they would be after a day of walking weighted down with furs, baskets, bowls, and weapons. They shed their belongings each night and left a few behind each dawn when they started up again. In Timmorn's day their migrations had been undertaken with the help of the hunt's strong shoulders. None of the elves could carry their fair share of the burden and soon, not more than eight days' wandering from the cave, even the first-born were carrying little more than their best weapons and furs.

The forest changed slowly, a few more of the spreading, leaf-dropping trees mixed in with the evergreens for each day they marched south. But the hunting remained hard. The tall paths, which in other seasons had guided the deer from meadows to streams, were encroached by berry-vines and the stream-banks were marked only with the restless tracks of predators like themselves. When, as often happened now, the She-Wolf called a halt that lasted several days, the unfamiliar terrain proved as empty as hunted-out forest around the cave.

The elves were too tired to complain; the first-born sought refuge in the wolf-song which lowered horizons and made deprivation bearable. Hunt, sleep, walk—a daily cycle broken by eating only if the hunting had been good. The She-Wolf did not notice when Selnac gave her daughter, whom they had taken to calling Journey, to Laststar; the wolf-song saw and sang the changes into timelessness until it took conscious effort to recall that anything had ever been different.

Nor could she ever reconstruct the moment when Murrel started calling herself New-Wolf and used Glowstone's second-best spear as a walking stick. That it had happened was somehow important and she fought to the edge of the wolfsong to ask the elf about it. But the smiling answer: **We found his name beyond your wolf-song** made no sense and was swiftly forgotten.

Only one discord sounded within her wolf-song: Zarhan Fastfire. He lurked at the edge of her vision and the edge of her thoughts. Like all the elves he had withered during the journey. His eyes were hollow and ringed with smoke that would not wash away. He staggered more than walked and his name crept into her dreams like a wounded animal. His agonies became her agonies; she drove his name away but kept the pain and brought it with her deep inside the wolf-song.

The elves knew how many days it had been—and could have told the first-born, had Timmorn's children been able to ask the question. The tall, slightly-built elders sent prayers to their ancestors begging that the journey might end soon, but they dared not fall behind the relentless She-Wolf who pulled them farther south.

Their silver-haired leader, grown more distant and wolflike with each passing day, rejected each likely lair with a toothy snarl and a sending that contained few, if any, elfin words. Deer—the image was burned into her narrowly-focused mind—if her tribe wanted deer, then she would lead them until the deer were plentiful again.

The end came at dawn—the seventy-second dawn, Talen was heard to remark—at the shore of a broad, shallow lake.

Countless split hooves had churned the soft dirt into mud, and out amid the reeds was the largest deerlike creature elves or first-born had ever seen. Mosshunter could have curled up comfortably between the tips of the beast's spreading antlers. Samael, the tallest of the elves, could not have seen over its shoulder.

A collective sigh of awe rose from elves and first-born alike as they considered the bounty nature had at last set before them. A second sigh rose from the first-born: would their flint-tipped spears bring the beast down?

**Fire,** Zarhan advised them, with images of his grandfather's methods.

**Relays,** TreeWalker replied. None of the first-born would carry fire in their hands as Zarhan's images suggested.

Their first hunt was futile, though Frost stumbled, literally, into a den of rnask-eyes, and Glowstone said that he'd noticed a rocky ledge that might serve as a base camp. Their second, a few days later, was worse. They brought the beast to bay before it was truly exhausted. It charged, swinging its murderous antlers, and flung Mosshunter head-over-heels into the brush before making its escape.

**No good,** the She-Wolf seethed as they bore Moss-hunter's broken, barely breathing body back to the rock ledge. **No good. We leave.**

She told them to retie their bundles, and Selnac challenged her.

**He can't be moved,** the elfin healer sent white-hot words into the She-Wolf s mind. **Go yourself. We remain.**

The She-Wolf learned there was another way to break a challenge—and more about the qualities of leadership. She admitted she was wrong without bending her neck but insisted, successfully, that they not hunt the branch-horned beast with spears again. She thought time and temptation denied would bring them around to her opinions, but she hadn't noticed the changes that had settled around the elves.

Rest and an abundance of small game had lifted the weariness from those narrow shoulders but their limbs remained lank and sinewy. Chanfur called herself Changefur; Samael named himself Dreamkeeper and so on until only a few of the elves kept their birth names exclusively. They still couldn't hunt, but those agile fingers that turned reeds into baskets were busy turning vines into huge creations that Zarhan said were nets.

Their audacity enraged the She-Wolf. These beasts weren't deer—and they had said they wanted deer. She turned on Fastfire when he brought her his new ideas for hunting the branch-horn by driving the beast under a tree from which waiting elves would drop the net, which would keep it from charging. If he had challenged, she would have broken him utterly; but he was Zarhan. He slipped through her anger with a smile.

She remained behind with the frailest of the elves, Selnac, Mosshunter, and little Journey, who giggled as she toddled after the pacing chieftess. It went against the blood to wish them ill, but she could not wish them well either, and she slipped into the darkest parts of the wolf-song when an exultant sending proclaimed to the whole forest that the hunt had been successful.

Zarhan led the procession that brought the prize back to the rock ledge, holding one end of the three spears they needed to carry it. His excitement and satisfaction transcended words or sendings—and the She-Wolf met it with a look that was pure ice.

**Challenge me, damn you.**

Her sending should have rocked him. Narrowed focus as it was, it had the power to turn the other elves and first-born with him pale. But if he showed any reaction at all it was nothing more than a slight slump to his shoulders and a darkening of his eyes.

**No,** he replied, and he looked away—ignoring her rather than submitting.

She stormed away from the ledge, noticing but not caring that she left Journey crying behind her. The wolf-song was a dark rage within her; she understood Threetoe at his worst now. Stripping the bark off a luckless sapling, the She-Wolf gave way to immutable, primitive rhythms of the wolf-song: a distrust of invention and cleverness; the hatred of change; and the fear of it. She was a she-wolf again, nameless and feral, when Zarhan Fastfire dared to place his hands on her shoulders and sent an empty brilliance into her mind.

Timmain's lost magic rose within her. The snarling creature who whirled around to face her tormentor glowed with the power to become a wolf forever. Had she succeeded in her lunge for his throat she would have been a wolf the moment his blood passed through her lips, but he met shifting with fire and forced her into a challenge.

**Now—if it's the only way.**

His fire faded; he could not bring himself to hurt her. He fell backward, borne down by her weight and ferocity. His physical strength was simply not enough to protect him. He closed his eyes and put all his effort into one last, radiant sending.

**Rahnee!**

The sound thundered and echoed in her mind. She hesitated just long enough for him to throw her to one side.

**Rahnee!**

It stunned her; left her gasping in her own saliva. She gagged, coughed, and fell limp as the latent magic ebbed away.

"Rahnee," Zarhan whispered, lifting her head into his lap and wondering if he had lost her after all.

He was asleep with his arms still around her, his spine propped against a tree trunk, when the nightmare ended and she opened her eyes. Her lip was swollen and lifeless where she'd bitten through it; there wasn't a muscle in her body that felt strong enough to move. It was just as well. Had she been able to slip away from him in shame, she might never have returned. Instead, trapped there in the moonlight, she had the time to make peace between the wolf-song and the newly-illuminated corners of her elfin-self. It would never be easy to have two complete natures; at least now they both had names.

No, only one name: Rahnee the She-Wolf, just as he was Zarhan Fastfire.

**How long did you know?** she wondered, believing he was still asleep.

**I heard your name long before you were born. I did not know, for certain, it was you until just now.**

Love did not grow quickly between them, but then, Recognition cared nothing for the parents—only for the children. They were luckier than some of the others. Samael never came to terms with the passion that drove him to Frost and, for her part, Frost would never reveal the name she found on the other side of the wolf-song. Rellah would bear Sharpears' child—and her dislike of him grew faster than her belly.

Like a songbird caught in a storm, Selnac fluttered from one first-born male to another. Recognition drove her to a frenzy and her healer's soul, which knew Journey had been her last child, could do nothing to alleviate the pain. They found her one early winter morning, floating facedown by the lake shore. Their relief that her suffering had ended was as real as their mourning that she was gone.

By spring a new generation was appearing. Rahnee and Zarhan called their first son Brighteyes, knowing that in time he'd claim one of the many names they heard between them. He was one of a double-hand of imps who ran circles around their elders and taxed the ingenuity of the hunters to provide enough food for them all.

The tribe rarely had more than six able hunters at a time. One of the giant deer fed them for three days, but they dared not bring down more than one of the beasts between cycles of the moons. Fish chowder made an unheralded return to their diet, and Rahnee began to dread the coming of cold weather.

She was the unquestioned leader—unchallenged since she had found her elfin name. Zarhan was the clever one who turned their ledge into a hide-roofed lodge and showed them how to turn the sticky clay by the lake shore into watertight pots and bowls. He hunted regularly and successfully, but he had no magic solution to their looming problem.

"Bring back Threetoe," he whispered in jest one late autumn night when Rahnee's anxiety kept her awake in his arms.

She froze and shook free of him. The wolf-song still stood between them, pulling shadows across her memories. Their interests never matched perfectly; their jokes often fell on thorny ground. She had forgotten Threetoe, the hunt, and her father. The dreamberries could bring back the memories without pain, but Zarhan's casual recollections were the root of many of their quarrels.