The Wolves of Midwinter (41 page)

Margon sighed but said nothing. Felix was staring at Hockan, and it was impossible to read into his wolfen face or posture any response. It was the same with all of them. Only a voice or a gesture could reveal a response. And now only Hockan was speaking. Even the mourning females had gone silent. For Reuben to hear these harsh and frightening words spoken with such a beautiful voice was crushing.

“What arrogance, what pride,” said Hockan, “what greed for undeserved admiration. And do you think you’ve seen the last of greedy doctors and government men who would put a price on our heads and hunt us for their laboratories like vermin?”

“Stop,” said Margon. “You misjudge everything.”

“Do I?” asked Hockan. “I misjudge nothing. You put us all at risk with your revels and your games. Fiona was right, you learned nothing from your own blunders.”

“Oh, go away from here, you pompous fool,” said Sergei.

Hockan turned and looked at Reuben and Stuart.

“Young ones, I caution you,” he said. “Move away from the living; move away from those of flesh and blood who were your kin, for your sake, and for theirs. Mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, unborn child—forswear them. You have no right to them or their affections. The lie you live can only contaminate and destroy them. See what Felix’s evil has done already to this one’s father.”

Margon made a low disgusted and derisive sound. Felix remained still and quiet.

“Oh, yes,” said Hockan. His voice now had become tremulous. “Fiona and Helena were unwise, and meddlesome and reckless. I don’t deny it. Young Morphenkinder, untried and unchastened and now gone forever. Forever, when they might have lived till the end of time. Into the need fire, the bone fire of Modranicht! What is it now, this fire? What have your Forest Gentry made of it? An unclean funeral pyre. But who provoked those two, our sisters? Who gave them scandal? Where did it all start, that is what you must ask yourselves.”

No one answered him.

“It was Felix who drew this innocent man into his web,” said Hockan. “Nideck Point is his snare. Nideck Point is his public shame. Nideck Point is his abomination.” His voice rose. “And it was Felix who roused the spirits of the forest to an unholy and bloody violence never witnessed before! It is Felix who has strengthened them, emboldened them, enlisted them like dark angels in his unholy designs.”

He was visibly trembling, but he drew himself up, and caught his breath and then went on in the same exquisitely modulated voice as before.

“And so now you have these murderous spirits on your side,” he said. “Ah, such a wonder. Are you proud, Felix? Are you proud, Margon?”

From Elthram there came a low hiss, and suddenly the same rose
from all the Forest Gentry everywhere in the clearing, a storm of hissing in derision.

Hockan stood still regarding them all.

“Young ones,” he said. “Burn Nideck Point.” He pointed to Reuben, then to Stuart. “Burn it to the very foundations!” His voice rose again until it was just below a roar. “Burn the village of Nideck. Erase it from the earth. That should be your penance at the very least for this, all of you! What right have you to human love, or human adulation! What right have you to darken innocent lives with your duplicity and evil power!”

“Enough from you!” cried Elthram. He was plainly in a rage. All around him, the Forest Gentry collected in vivid color in the glare of the fire.

“I have no stomach for war with you,” said Hockan, “any of you. But you all know the truth. Of all the misbegotten immortals roaming this earth, we pride ourselves on rectitude and conscience!” He beat his chest silently with his paws. “We, the protectors of the innocent, are known for the singular gift of knowing good from evil. Well, you have made a mockery of this, all of you. You have made a mockery of
us
. And what are we now but another horror?”

He walked right up to Elthram and stood before him, peering into his eyes. It was a frightful image, Elthram surrounded by his kindred, glaring at the powerfully built white Man Wolf, and the Man Wolf poised as if to spring, but doing nothing.

Slowly, Hockan turned and drew closer to Reuben. His posture shifted from one of confrontation to weariness, his body shuddering.

“What will you say to the mournful and broken soul of Marchent Nideck who seeks your comfort, Reuben?” he asked. His words came on, smooth, seductive. “It’s to you that she reveals her sorrow, not to Felix, her guardian and her kin who destroyed her. How will you explain to the murdered Marchent that you share her great-uncle’s cursed and pestilential power, feasting now so happily and greedily in this beautiful realm which she gave to you?”

Reuben didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He wanted to protest,
with all his soul he wanted to protest, but Hockan’s words overwhelmed him. Hockan’s passion and conviction had overwhelmed him. Hockan’s voice had woven some crippling spell around him. Yet he knew, positively knew, that Hockan was wrong.

Helplessly, he looked down at Phil, who lay half conscious on the ground, his head turned to the side, his body tightly covered by the green velvet cloaks, yet plainly shuddering beneath them.

“Oh, yes, your father,” said Hockan, his voice lower, words coming more slowly. “Your poor father. The man who gave you life. And he’s ripped out of life now as you were ripped. Are you happy for him?”

No one stirred. No one spoke.

Hockan turned away, and with a series of small eloquent grunts and noises beckoned his remaining female cohorts to go with him, and off they ran except for one, vanishing into the darkness.

That one was Berenice. She remained kneeling close to Phil, and now Frank went to her, and helped her to her feet in the most tender and human manner.

Elthram backed away from the center, out of the direct glare of the bonfire. All around the great arena, against the pale boulders, stood the Forest Gentry watching, waiting.

“Come on, let’s take him back home,” said Sergei. “Let me carry him.”

Gently he scooped up the body of Phil and laid Phil gently against his shoulder. Lisa secured the warm wrappings around Phil, walking beside Sergei as he moved towards the passage out of the clearing.

The other Morphenkinder were all in motion, moving ahead and behind, Laura moving right with them.

The Forest Gentry began to melt away as if they’d never been there. Elthram had vanished.

Reuben wanted to go along with the others, but something held him back. He watched them as they made their way into that narrow passage just beyond where the discarded drums and pipes lay in the dust. The gold-trimmed drinking horns lay about everywhere. And the cauldron still gave off steam on its bed of coals.

Reuben groaned. With his whole soul he groaned. He felt a pain in
his belly. It grew bigger and bigger, constricting his heart, throbbing in his temples. The cold air lacerated him, bruised him, and he realized the wolf hair had fallen away from him, leaving him naked.

He saw his naked white fingers trembling before him and felt the wind tear at his eyes.

“No,” he whispered. And he willed it to return. “You come back to me,” he said in a half whisper. “I won’t let you go. Be mine now.” And at once the old tingling surged in his hands and in his face. The hair once more grew thick and smooth over him spreading with the inexorable force of water. His muscles sang with the old lupine strength and the warmth enclosed him.

But the tears had risen in his eyes. The bonfire hissed and spat and rustled in his ears.

From his right, Laura approached, this comely gray she-wolf whose face and form resembled his own, this savage pale-eyed monster who was so unutterably beautiful in his eyes. She had come back for him. He fell into her arms.

“You heard him, you heard all the terrible things that he said,” Reuben whispered.

“Yes,” she said. “I did. But you are bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Come. We will make our truth together.”

F
OR DAYS
, E
LTHRAM SAT
in the cottage by Phil’s bed. Phil slept. A powerful drink was given to Phil over and over again to make him sleep, this drink concocted by Elthram and Lisa, and Phil dozed sometimes moaning or singing under his breath, his wounds visibly healing, his fever rising and ebbing and finally dying away.

Slowly, the subtle changes began to appear—the thickening of his white hair with its reddish blond streaks, the restlessness in his legs and arms as his muscles grew stronger. And his eyes, of course, his pale hazel eyes were now a deeper shade of green when from time to time he opened them.

All this time Reuben slept either on the floor near Phil’s bed, or in a chair by the fire, or from time to time in the spacious attic above, on a simple mattress bed Lisa made up for him.

Laura brought down Reuben’s laptop computer for him, and spent the nights on the attic mattress by his side or alone as he remained below, in the leather recliner by the fire, listening in a half sleep to the rhythm of Phil’s breathing. But Laura was often gone. She could not yet control the transformation, and she and Thibault slipped off again and again together in the forest.

Felix and the others looked in on Phil often. A terrible gloom gripped Felix, but he showed no desire to talk with anyone about it. It was as if a dark and tortured soul had taken up residence in Felix’s body, claiming Felix’s face and voice for his own, though it could not be Felix.

Reuben went out to him and they stood in silence in the rain, merely embracing one another in shared and wordless grief for the terrible
twists and turns of Modranicht. Then Felix wandered off alone, and Reuben returned to his vigil.

Margon whispered that they must all leave Felix alone, in the wake of Hockan’s scathing excoriations. Sergei snorted with contempt. “Hockan, the judge,” he said. “He is the high priest of words and words and words. His words couple with his words and breed more words. His words run rampant.”

Stuart appeared from time to time, as tormented as the others. “And so there can be war amongst us,” he said to Reuben in anxious whispers. “There can be terrible strife. I knew it.” Stuart needed to talk to Reuben and Reuben knew this, but he couldn’t leave Phil just now. He couldn’t take his mind off Phil. He couldn’t answer Stuart’s many questions. Besides, who better to answer those questions than Margon, if only Margon would.

Lisa told Reuben that the first thing Felix had done on Wednesday morning was to commence plans for a sprinkler system to protect the house, hooked to the county water supply, but also to a huge reserve tank that would be installed in the parking area behind the servants’ wing.

“Nobody will ever burn down Nideck Point,” said Felix. “Not while I have breath in my body.” Other than those few words, nothing more on the horrors of Modranicht came from Felix.

“He is in Marchent’s old room,” said Lisa. “He sleeps there on top of her bed. He won’t disturb anything. This is not good, this must stop.” She shook her head.

But what of Margon, Reuben asked Lisa in furtive whispers—Margon, who was so opposed to the Forest Gentry on general principles? Was he not alarmed that the Forest Gentry had marshaled such physical power on Modranicht? How many times had Reuben been told that the Forest Gentry never harmed anyone?

Lisa waved all this away with the soft answer, “Margon loves your father. He knows why they did what they did.”

From time to time, Margon checked on Phil with the careful scrutiny and precision of a doctor, with Stuart always nearby. Margon was
easy with Elthram there. They nodded to one another, as if nothing unusual had occurred in the history of the Forest Gentry, as if they had not massed together to kill two Morphenkinder before everyone’s eyes.

Finally Phil was out of all danger.

Yet now and then Phil cried out in his sleep, and Lisa knelt beside him whispering. “In the beginning he was with the living and the dead,” she told Reuben. “Now he is only with the living.”

Elthram spoke to no one. If he could sleep in his material form, he gave no evidence of it. Each morning, people of the Gentry came to bring fresh flowers, which Elthram arranged in vases and glasses around on the windowsills and the tables.

Lisa was as easy with Elthram’s presence as she’d ever been. And Sergei and Thibault spoke to him casually now and then when they came to visit the guesthouse, though Elthram only nodded, rarely taking his eyes off Phil.

But surely the massive show of physical power by the Forest Gentry had meant something to the others. It had to have shocked them all. This was much on Reuben’s mind. The Forest Gentry could indeed do harm to others when they chose. Who could deny it now?

Yet he felt comfortable with Elthram, indeed, more comfortable perhaps than he’d ever been. Elthram’s presence had a soothing affect on him. If Phil took a turn for the worse, Elthram would be the first to see it, and call attention to it. Of that Reuben was sure.

One early morning while Laura slept, Reuben wrote out all that he could remember of Hockan’s condemnations. He did not attempt a reconstruction of the speech so much as an accurate record of it. And when he was finished, he lay restless in the warm dry quiet of the attic, the window a patch of white light, feeling a deep dull misery.

On the morning of the fourth day—December 28—Reuben went up while it was still dark to shower and shave, and get fresh clothing. He and Laura made love in their bedroom, and Reuben fell helplessly to sleep afterwards in Laura’s arms. It wasn’t good, however. It had not been enough. Reuben wanted her in the beast shape; he wanted both of them coupling in the forest, savage as they’d been by the Yule fire. But that would have to wait.

It was ten a.m. when he awakened, alone, filled with guilt and worry for Phil. How could he have left Phil like this? Hastily he pulled on his jeans and his polo shirt, and searched for his shoes and jacket.

It seemed to take him forever to reach the cottage. He came in to find Phil at his desk, writing in his diary. Lisa was assembling his breakfast in the kitchen. Setting down the tray and carafe of coffee, with cups and plates for father and son, she slipped out of the cottage. Elthram was gone.