Shadowlands (26 page)

He snorted, the impatience that lay under all his thoughts rising
for a moment to the surface. However hard it was to be alone, he could not easily change his circumstances. Best he remember that, and keep his mind on his task.

He forced his pace to slow as he neared the High Prince’s pavilion, its silver roof, red walls, and black banners gleaming like dragon scales in the bright sun. Part of him wanted to rush forward, brushing aside anyone who would stand in his way, and throw himself at the feet of his Prince. It had been simple when she was just Truthsheart, and she had taken him in her arms and Healed him. Now that she was High Prince, he shared her with everyone who made up her
fara’ip
, and somehow this made him feel more distanced from her.

“You have some purpose here?” This was a Starward Rider, dressed in blue and purple, who wore his ash-blond hair hanging loose down his back. He had a sword at his right hip, and an archer’s arm guard on his right arm, but bore no
gra’if
.

“I would speak with the High Prince.”

“You would?” The Rider looked Wolf up and down, clearly unimpressed with the dusty boots, wide-brimmed hat, khaki trousers, and cotton shirt suitable for travel in the Tasmanian winter. Wolf stifled the urge to brush himself off.

“Many wish to approach the High Prince. Indeed, who would not?” But the Starward Rider did not step aside. Nor did he ask Wolf for his name.

Wolf was debating whether to turn away—was what he had learned from Swift River Current really as significant as he thought?—or to insist on his rights, when a Wild Rider in battered leathers with
gra’if
showing at his throat, came out of the entrance, and greeted him before he could speak.

“Stormwolf. Have you been here long?” The sideways glance Wings of Cloud gave the Starward Rider almost made Wolf smile. “This Rider was with us on
Ma’at
, the Stone of Virtue, and fought by the side of the Guardian,” Wings said, addressing the Starward guard. “He is always welcome to the Princes.”

The Starward Rider’s inclined head was almost a bow, considerably more courteous than his behavior thus far, but he still did not offer his own name and Guidebeast. Wolf lifted his brows and barely nodded in return. He should not let such things annoy him, he
thought, as he allowed Wings of Cloud to draw him into the pavilion.

“Supercilious ass,” the Moonward Rider said as soon as they were out of earshot of the man at the entrance. “One of those who overvalue ceremony, and thinks himself favored because he is a Starward, like the High Prince. Making him stupid as well as pompous.” The corridor they entered seemed somehow to be walled in darkwood paneling.

“Friends have turned to enemies for smaller things before. I know a Song—” Wolf frowned. Where had that thought come from? “But what of you? Are you well?” It struck him suddenly that Wings had lost a brother at the battle on the Stone, a twin. That was hard, very hard. A brother’s loss was something that Wolf understood very well, though caution held him back from sharing this with Wings.

“I survive.” The Moonward’s voice flattened slightly. “Some days are harder than others, but the High Prince keeps me too busy to brood.” He turned to Wolf, but his ready smile did not quite reach his eyes. “Do you think she does this on purpose?”

“She is a great Healer.” The Wild Rider was not the only one the High Prince was keeping busy, Wolf realized. Could she be treating him with the same prescription of hard work that she was using on Wings of Cloud? For the life of him, Wolf could not remember whether Wings knew his own history, knew he had once been a Hound. He told himself it was not cowardice, but caution that kept him from referring to it. “I think we must assume that whatever she does, she does with purpose.”

Wings stopped suddenly, his brow furrowed, bringing Wolf to a stop with him. “Wait, you will not have heard,” he said. “The Griffin Lord has Faded.”

Wolf stood blinking for a long moment. Lightborn? Lightborn
Faded
? “Was it the Hunt?” he said, his voice sounding far away.

“The Hunt? Why would you think of such things? As if the reality was not difficult enough?”

Wolf shook his head, momentarily at a loss for words. “It is just—so suddenly? What could have happened?”

Wings put his hand on Wolf’s arm. “Some of the Basilisk’s Warriors cannot surrender.”

“There are always fools, in every conflict, but—”

“No, you misunderstand. Not they
will
not surrender, they
cannot
. The High Prince says it is a Chant, similar to the Chant of Binding. Lightborn,” Wings of Cloud exhaled sharply. “Lightborn thought the Rider merely frightened of capture, and did not expect the blow that killed him.”

Wolf looked down the corridor toward the entrance, then back, in the direction they were headed. This news changed things; there was something else he needed to do now.

“The Lady Moon,” he said. “Do you know where she might be found?”

Wings studied his face before finally nodding. “You are in luck, my friend. She is here, in this very pavilion, but this way.” The Wild Rider drew Wolf back to a cross corridor lined in orange silk that they had earlier passed by.

“You will deal carefully?” Wings said, as they came to a door made of a sliding screen painted with Manticores. “The loss has been greatest for her.”

“She loved him.” Wolf glanced at the door and back to the Wild Rider. “I know.”

Wings of Cloud rested his hand on Wolf’s shoulder, squeezed lightly before letting him go. “I like you, my friend. You are quiet, as though you bring some of the stillness of
Ma’at
with you. I’d rather see more of such as you, and less of those like our friend at the entrance. Have you ever given thought to becoming a Wild Rider?”

An unfamiliar tightening in his chest stopped any quick answer he might have made. This was tantamount to an invitation to join the
fara’ip
of the Wild Riders, which meant that others among them must feel the same way, must have spoken of him among themselves. It was the first such gesture of friendship he had received since his Healing.

No. He was wrong. This was the first such gesture from another Rider. The human girl, Valory.
She
had offered to be his friend. Wolf shrugged away the image of her warm golden eyes. Like the High Prince, Valory knew and accepted him for what he was, but she was human. He could not expect that many others of his own kind would feel the same.

“I value your welcome, more than I can say,” he told Wings. “But for now I must think of my duty to the High Prince.” He would have
to tell them. He could not become part of a
fara’ip
unless the truth was known to all. Even if it meant the welcome would be withdrawn. “Perhaps, when my task is discharged…”

“Of course. We will not forget.” Wings gestured at the door. “When you are ready to see the Prince, Moon will call me.”

The sliding darkwood-and-silk panel opened into a room full of sunlight, and the smell of rainfall on summer grass. There were several people already in the room, but before he could announce himself, he found his arms full of a Starward Rider dressed in the colors of the High Prince.

“Wolf, what brings you—” Moon released him and stepped back far enough to see his face. “Oh. The same thing that brings everyone.” It was hard to be certain in this light, but it seemed that Moon’s almond skin had paled to alabaster. Certainly her gray eyes, so like those of her sister, seemed to carry an extra shadow.

“You smell differently,” he said.

Now her eyes lightened, and her smile broadened. “That would be the child.” She put her hand on her belly, though so far as Wolf could see, there was yet no swelling there. “I carry a small grifflet, though whether lord or lady, my sister will not say.”

“But then you…” Wolf let the words trail away as he studied Moon more closely. The slight giddiness in her speech, the way her heart beat faster. “You have more
dra’aj
,” he said, and his heart grew cold.
How is this possible?

“No, not I.” Moon patted her stomach. “Again, it is the child, and the
dra’aj
is his.” Lightborn’s she meant, though how that was possible Wolf could not imagine. “But come, we need not be standing here.” She drew him farther into the room. The other two Riders, after being introduced as Singers helping Moon with a search, excused themselves with sympathetic smiles. Moon pulled him down next to her in the wide window seat.

“Moon, I am more sorry than I can say.”

Her faced hardened to a mask so quickly that Wolf cursed himself for speaking. But then she softened again, her eyes half-hooded, and slipped her hand into his.

“I wished you with me, when the news came.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, as if she could keep the grief away if she
were quiet. “You are the only one who has known my heart from the first.” She looked at him, silvery tears welling in her eyes. “At times, it is more than I can bear.”

“It becomes less sharp,” he told her, covering her hand with his own. “There will come moments, more and more, when you do not think of it. But it will never go completely. You will never lose him completely.”

She squeezed his hand and drew hers back. Her eyes glittered again as she turned away.

“Did you come first to me?” she said. “I was not expecting you back so soon.”

Unsure how much to tell her, Wolf looked down at his clasped hands, then let his eyes wander to examine the room itself. It was a strange hybrid. The walls by the sliding door were the taut silks of the Princes’ pavilion, here flame colored, while the window wall where they sat was paneled, a layer of darkwood covering a wide thickness of stone. As if to emphasize its difference, the window looked out onto a rocky coast, where the tide was only beginning to turn. He glanced sideways at Moon, and the drifting melancholy of her face brought him to a decision. Telling her would be good practice for speaking to the High Prince, and it would serve to distract her as well.

“I found someone I was not, exactly, looking for.” When Moon turned to lift an eyebrow at him, Wolf began by telling her of finding Nighthawk, and Graycloud at Moonrise.

“Graycloud has been here himself, with his foster daughter. I spoke with him, though not with her.”

Wolf drew in his breath. Valory had been here; she had spoken with the High Prince.
Did they talk about me?
“He came, then? He had hoped that his injury would not worsen.”

“They came with other news, they spoke of the human Outsiders, and of what they called stable Hounds. I was just now consulting with the Singers, asking them to search for any Song that might tell us of such things.”

“Then I have something to add to your knowledge. When I was with Graycloud and Valory Martin, we did not know how the Hunt were keeping their Rider shapes.” As he told Moon about his encounter
with Swift River Current, she left the window seat, going to pour two cups of wine from a dark clay bottle sitting on a table against the silk wall.

He took a cup from her gratefully, and only just stopped himself from draining it at once, forcing himself to savor the taste. He waited until Moon had seated herself again to continue.

“She did not at first realize that I was no longer…that I was not—”

“That you had been Healed.”

Wolf nodded. “She thought that I kept my Rider shape because I had fed on humans. She claimed that feeding on human
dra’aj
could stabilize us—them—somehow, enabling them to control the changes.”

“Interesting.” Moon clasped her hands in her lap and tapped her thumbs together. “A valuable addition to our knowledge. Is there something more you can tell us from your unique perspective?”

Wolf gritted his teeth. There it was. Even Moon, who was like a sister to him, knew that it was his “unique perspective” that the High Prince valued. He steeled himself, and continued. “We all fed on humans from time to time, but very seldom, and only in the absence of other
dra’aj
. Theirs is,” he shrugged, “unsatisfactory.” He lifted his cup, swirled the ruby-colored liquid. “As if this wine were watered away to nothing.” He lowered the wine again without tasting it.

“Not many in his court knew it, perhaps even you did not, but the Basilisk would give us Solitaries to feed from, and Naturals, those who displeased or disobeyed him. Even, on occasion, Riders. Only when we were taken to the Shadowlands would we feed from humans. We did not feed on our escorts, the Riders who took us.” Wolf wiped the grin off his face as soon as he felt it forming. “Though we thought of it, of course.”

“Were there many of you? The Songs speak of single Hounds, though you are called the Hunt.” Moon’s voice was firmer now, more its liquid self. As Wolf had suspected, this distraction was doing her good.

He considered her question. “We
are
a Pack, this is true. Until we were taken to find the Exile, there were not many of us taken to the Shadowlands, never more than one or two Fives at a time.”

Moon shifted to look at him more directly. “Fives?”

“It is how we are counted. In Fives. When the period of Exile was ending, we were six Fives—”

“So there are
thirty
Hounds in the Shadowlands?” Moon seemed to be doing some mental calculation of her own.

Wolf shook his head; this was what he’d been trying to work out himself, with limited success. “No. Some returned with me, and were killed here. Some remained in the Shadowlands, and were killed there…” He stopped, and risked a glance at her.

“How do you know this?” Again that quiet, gentle tone.

Wolf watched Moon’s face. This was something he had not told her—not the only thing, but still something she might find difficult to forgive. “I was Pack Leader.” Wolf waited.

“
You
were?” Moon shut her eyes and Wolf thought he had lost her. Then the corners of her mouth turned down, and she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Are we not a wonderful pair, you and I? Tools of the Basilisk. At least you were compelled, while I—”

“Were compelled in your own way. As was Lightborn, also, in his own way.” It was part of what drew them together, Wolf knew. “But we are not his tools now, and we act to save those who were.” He stood and put his wine cup down where he had been sitting. He and Moon had gone down this path many times, and he saw no profit in treading it again.