Wolf moon charles de l.., p.1
Wolf Moon - Charles de Lint, page 1
SHE COULD HAVE HIS HEART FOR THE TAKING…
It needed but one touch to bind him to her, time without end. And as though she read Kern’s mind, she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. Her head was tilted back, and the moonlight transformed her face into such a vision of loveliness that he could no more resist than a child might a sweetstick.
Tentatively, he lowered his lips to hers. As the kiss grew more involved, it was only with a great effort that Kem drew back. This was not the time. This was too soon. A little short of breath, they faced each other.
Kern leaned forward and kissed her again, lightly this time. Then taking her hand, he led her back to the inn. At the door he paused and turned to her, the moon highlighting his face.
“I would never see you hurt,” he said. “That’s all I can promise you.”
“I can’t ask for more,” she said.
WOLF
MOON
Charles de Lint
A SIGNET BOOK
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
NAL BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION. NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY. 1633 BROADWAY. NEW YORK. NEW YORK 10019
Copyright © 1988 by Charles de Lint All rights reserved
SIGNET TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
REGISTERED TRADEMARK-MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN CHICAGO. U.S.A.
SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSIC. MENTOR. ONYX, PLUME, MERIDIAN and NAL Books are published by NAL PENGUIN INC.,
1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019
First Printing, August, 1988
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents:-
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh
Eighth
Ninth
Tenth
Eleventh
Twelfth
Thirteenth
Fourteenth
Fifteenth
Sixteenth
Last
About the Author
for my sisters
Kamé and Karin
First
“Since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.”
—William Shakespeare
(2 HENRY IV i.2)
The music stopped.
The wolf paused at the abrupt silence, ears cocked, tongue lolling. His sides heaved as he panted for air. He stood at the base of a steep incline, concealed in a stand of cedar. His russet pelage, as red as a fox’s, merged with the tree trunks and mulch of reddened branchlets underfoot so much that by remaining motionless, he was, to all intents and purposes, invisible.
Lifting his head, he sorted through the sea of odors that the wind brought him: pine resin, from higher up, and cedar; hare scent, old. His nostrils quivered. The wind came downhill, from behind. It took his own musty smell and sent it along his backtrail, offering no compensation for its betrayal. There were only sight and sound by which to measure the advance of his pursuers.
Sound came first, or rather, the hint of sound.
Where branches should snap, or undergrowth be crushed with its passage, his bear-large stalker whispered through the forest. It seemed that the ground should vibrate under its relentless tread, but it moved as ghostlike and light-pawed as the wolf did himself. The wolf trembled with the need to run once more, but stayed to listen and watch, taking advantage of even this brief halt to recoup what he could erf his depleted strength. Only when he saw the silvery bulk of the creature moving through the cedar and birch, did he dart from his hiding place to scramble up the bluff. As though timed to his motion, the music began once more.
The forest rang with it, deep chords that snaked their way uphill, entwining him with their unnatural harmonies. Inexorably, they worked their will on his consciousness—slowing his pace, sapping the purpose from his limbs, weighting his paws so that each step became an effort. It was harping, yet held in its biting chords the pitch and timbre of baying wolfhounds and the cries of hunters, the whistle and thud of a cast spear and the sharp winding of calling horns.
The grizzled guard hairs that saddled the wolfs shoulders hackled. It was only harping, he told himself, for all the chimerical associations that flooded his mind. Only harping?
He stopped again, slowed as much by the music as by a perverse need to catch a view of the pursuit, and studied his backtrail. The steep grade fell away in ridged folds of rocky ground, dressed with cedar and hemlock. Lower down, birch, aspen, and spruce vied for purchase with mossy granite outcrops that jutted from the hillside like the grey bones of long-dead behemoths. In places, the roots of the trees twisted from the dark soil to enwrap the rocks with knotted loops. A thick undergrowth of brush and year-old saplings choked the spaces between the trees. Ferns, dried and brown, swayed like broken fans under the drooping boughs. And then, through the cross-hatch of the branches, as though summoned by his survey, he saw them.
The feragh came first, agile and supple-limbed for all its bulk, soft-stepping a path through the underbrush so that not one autumnal leaf seemed disturbed. (Or did it simply, like some phantom, pass through the undergrowth?) Its for was a silvery grey, though the broad ursine features were streaked with darker markings like a mask. The same dark hair trailed from the beginnings of its mane, down along the shaggy ridge of its spine. It was as large as a bear and walked upright like a man. The scent that came to the wolf as the wind shifted was like a wolverine’s—heavy and cloying.
It defied logic, should not exist. Even the forest appeared to sense it as something alien that was not to be abided. Did the trees not lean away from it as if to shun its presence, the ground shrink under its preternatural tread? The feragh belonged to the realms of myth. It should be bound in the words of a storyteller’s tale, not walking the world, sharp-fanged and clawed; not real, with form and scent and substance, stalking him. But still it lived. The music gave it life. And it hunted. Hunted him.
As the feragh began its ascent, the harper stepped into view. He was tall and lean, clad in dark hunting leathers that clung tightly to leg and arm. His tunic was of a design more suited to courts and towns than to the forest. It was cut to his figure, with gathered folds at the shoulders and brocaded around the throat and sleeves. Silver embroidery threaded vines and flowers on each breast. The buckles on his boots and the tunic’s buttons were silver as well, and sparkled.
When he caught sight of the wolf, he paused, staring uphill. His slender fingers tugged the weird music from a small journey-harp effortlessly, almost as an afterthought. The chords that filled the forest with their strength belied the instrument’s size. The harp shone with an inner light and its dark wood gleamed, black as ebony. The forepillar, neck, and sounding board were unadorned, yet in that innocuous instrument throbbed the power that had raised a feragh from legend and set it on the wolf’s trail.
There was magic afoot here, the wolf knew. Powerful magic against which he had no defense. Heavy though the feragh’s scent was, smothering the man, the wolf could smell the sorcery. It burned in the music. It burned in the harper’s features, highlighting his thin straight nose, planed brow, and gaunt cheek. It burned, too, in the feragh’s eyes.
The wolf growled, deep in his chest. The creature was close. Too close. And almost, the music had ensnared him. It forced the blood in his veins to pulse sluggishly, his head to droop with more than weariness. It bound his mind with lies of refuge and peace—did he only give himself over to it—but promised death in its underlying harmonies.
Snarling, the wolf turned to continue his own ascent, paws scrabbling for purchase in the thick carpet of pine needles and flat cedar leaves. His breath grew labored. Sharp jabs of pain accompanied each intake of air. At the summit he paused again. Foam flecked his lips and his tail hung limp, dragging on the ground.
He was no longer sure how long or how far the hunt had gone. The harping dulled his senses, weakened his limbs, and he could not find the strength to overcome it. He needed to strike out at his tormentor, to still the hateful music forever, but to reach the harper he must first face the feragh and in that action lay only death. He was unwilling to throw away his life. First the harper must be made to pay. That need sustained him more than simple survival.
The feragh was hellishly close. Its reek clogged the wolfs nostrils. The music fired his mind with scalding flames, numbing him. He willed his legs into motion. Powerful muscles bunched under his russet coat, but their main drive was gone. He staggered away from the summit’s lip, half dragging himself through the trees. The wind brought him the scent of water and he came to a cliffs edge, high above a river.
He looked down at the white caps of the water as it roared between the rocks below. The sound of its passage was muted and lost under the harper’s music. The weird harping was the only sound that existed now. He could hear nothing else. As he turned from the river to follow the cliff’s ridge, the feragh broke from the trees behind and charged.
The wolf meant to leap under the sweep of the feragh’s forelimbs, to strike for its throat, but his legs betrayed him. As the wind had. As the music did. He barely cleared the ground. The feragh’s paw batted him out of the air and sent him skidding to the cliff’s rim. Sharp pains lanced from his shoulder. As he moved, he could feel the raw wound tear. Dark blood clotted in his fur.
The feragh reared over him, blackening the sky. Saliva shone on the creature’s long incisors, frothed in the comers of its open jaws. As the feragh dropped to attack, the wolf moved. With the last of his strength, before the creature could strike its final blow, he heaved himself over the cliff to plummet to the waters far below.
The harper arrived in time to see the wolf go over. He left off his harping and ran to the edge of the precipice to look down, ignoring the feragh’s rancorous snarls at being thwarted. At first he saw only the white water as it rushed by, a hundred feet or so below. The rocks lifted from it like jagged teeth. He frowned. Then he saw something red bobbing downstream, watched it strike a boulder before the current dragged it under once more. He shrugged and ran his fingers through the feragh’s mane, rubbing the soft spot under its ear. The bearlike face turned querulously to him.
‘
“No, my friend. I fear the hunt’s done for today.”
The feragh rumbled a low bitter reply and the harper smiled.
“Another day,” he said. His features grew thoughtful. “Though I find it strange that a simple beast could give us such a run. One might be led to think there was more to it than met the eye. And such a pelt! It would have made a fine addition to my cloak. I hear the winter is harsh in Fenenghay and with a threadbare cloak…Still. No matter. We’ve lost the beast now.”
He sighed. Looking down at his harp, he pulled a sharp chord from its strings. At the sound of it, the feragh began to shimmer and grow insubstantial.
“I will say this, though,” the harper added. “If it did survive, it won’t escape us a second time.”
By the time the chord’s last echo died away, the harper stood alone on the clifftop. Except for some scratches on the stone underfoot and the scuffed mulch, there was no sign of the feragh. It had been summoned by harping; the same harping returned it to wherever it dwelled when the harper no longer had a use for it. It was his wild card when the stakes grew too steep. Yet it was his solace as well.
Swinging his instrument around to his back, the harper kicked a stone over the edge erf the cliff and watched it fall, vanishing in the storm of the white water as it dashed against the rocks. Then he turned to retrace his route through the forest.
Second
“What do you make of this, then?” Brigg asked.
Tick pushed his way through the reeds and came to stand beside his cousin. The marsh ground squelched pleasantly under his boots and he wiggled his toes.
They were lowland kimeyn, these two. Marsh-dwellers. Smaller in stature than their mountain kin who shunned all but the heights of the ranges overlooking Penenghay Valley, they still shared the same blood. Atypical of their race, they stood just under four feet in their boots (though Tick was an inch taller), were thin but strong for their size, with narrow sharp-featured feces and unblinking round eyes. But while the mountain kimeyn were generally dark-haired, these two had unruly thatches of corn-gold hair, streaked with brown. Their tunics and leggings were of leather, discolored and patched in many places, and each had a small cap to hold down his hair. Tick’s was berry red, while Brigg’s was the yellow of goldenrod.
“Looks to be a man,” Tick said. “Or what’s left of one.”
The object of their curiosity lay like a beached fish on the riverbank, limbs splayed, face buried in the weeds, and naked as the day he was born. He was loose-limbed, with big hands and feet. Standing, he’d top the kimeyn by no more than a foot and a half. Gaunt ribs poked out, stretching the skin across his chest, and his hair, which was the red of an autumn maple, was plastered against his head. His features, when the kimeyn cautiously turned him over, proved to be strong. Homely, rather than handsome. But it was the dark bruises that discolored most of his torso and the raw wounds on his shoulder that drew their attention just now.
“Looks to be, aye,” Brigg said. His nostrils crinkled and he shook his head. “But there was never a man with a scent like this one’s.”
“P’rhaps the water’s washed his scent from him.”
“P’rhaps it’ll rain honey tonight.”
Tick scrutinized the man carefully as an excuse to ignore the remark.
“Is he dead, do you think?” he asked at last.
“Hurt bad, seems. That shoulder needs looking after.” Brigg looked upriver to where the Tattershall’s waters cut through the hills. “The river’s given him quite a spin. I wonder where he fell in and how far it took him before dropping him off here, on our doorstep, as it were.”
Tick felt for a pulse at the man’s throat. Standing, he wiped his hand dry on his tunic and looked at his cousin. “He’s alive, sure enough. What should we do with him? Leave him?”
“Doesn’t seem right.”
“Doesn’t,” Tick agreed. “Still. He’s just a man. Let them see to their own.”
Brigg scratched his head, then busied his fingers with a tangle, tugging at it until the unruly locks were freed.
“Well?” Tick asked.
“Well yourself!” Brigg didn’t like decisions. He had the tangle free and stuck his hands in the pockets of his tunic, poking a finger through the hole in the left one. He sighed heavily. “We can’t just leave him.”
“I suppose not. What’s to do then? Take him home?”
Brigg shook his head. “We’ll get the boat and take him to the Tinker. They can care for him there.”
“But that’s miles from here. Why so far? We could leave him in Hay-on-Pen, couldn’t we?”
“And take our chances with all the menfolk crawling through the village?”
“To the Tinker, then,” Tick agreed.
“To the inn, aye. So we’d best get going, hey?”
Tick nodded glumly, then brightened. “We can nick some ale while they’re busy with him, couldn’t we?”
Brigg grinned. “Why not? Some pie, too, if the mistress has been baking.”
Tick rubbed his stomach. “Doesn’t seem such a bad bargain, hey?”
“A right moon-send,” Brigg agreed. “So let’s hop to it.”
They melted in among the reeds with the fluid swiftness that typified their race, returning in short order with a small coracle of tightly woven reeds that they launched into the Tattershall. A grass-rope line, running hum one rounded bow and tied to a rotting stump near the water, kept the craft snug with the shore, bobbing slightly in the current. Tick looked critically from the coracle to their proposed load.
“What if he tips it over?” he asked.
“And what if he doesn’t?” Brigg replied. “Now give me a hand.”
Grunting with the effort, the two kimeyn lifted the limp body and laid him aboard. The coracle sank alarmingly under the weight, the gunwales topping the water by only six inches. They arranged the man in a curl at the bottom of the boat, knees drawn up to his chin. Brigg adjusted one of the arms, laying it over the knees, then gave his cousin a poke. Gingerly, Tick clambered aboard and the gunwales dropped another two inches.
“This might not be such a good idea,” he said.
“Do you’ve a better?”
“No.”
“1 thought as much.” Brigg cast off and boarded as well. The coracle dipped again. The tops of the sides were now less than an inch and a half above the water. The Tattershall, seeming to sense their predicament, proceeded to lap w&ter over the gunwales and soon their passenger lay in a small pool of water. They propped his head under an arm to keep the water from his nose and mouth.
“Off we go then,” Brigg muttered.
He took up a paddle, then cursed as the coracle hove to one side, sloshing water all over his leggings.
“Can you keep still?” he demanded.
“I thought my leg was going to sleep, all scrunched up as it was.”
“If you tip us, I’ll see that your noggin goes to sleep with the help of a couple of sharp raps from my knuckles.”
Tick paddled in silence for a few moments, trying to think of a good retort, but came up blank. “How much ale do you think the boat could hold?” he asked at length.
