Wolf Hunting (48 page)

“And when,” Isende went on, “someone finally realized what was happening, the gates were closed down and sealed. In the confusion, no systematic effort was made to eliminate all mention of them. That mention is what we found in the library. There was nothing so neat as a formula for how to use the gates. Our first reference was an old journal, and for the longest time we thought that this place just had rather a lot of visitors for someplace in the countryside. Tiniel was the first to wonder.”

The young man looked as if he were about to say something along the lines of “Woe is me, cursed with such curiosity” but a glare from his twin stopped him.

“I,” Isende said firmly, “located the gate itself. I’d wondered about that central courtyard. It didn’t seem quite right—those big corridors leading to what was basically a dead end. The cold weather helped by killing back the vines. We were still going out there for water, and on one of those trips I noticed the markings on the walls. You probably can’t see them now that the plants have grown thick again, but the stones in the gate area are incised with some really intricate patterns. Tiniel and I were fairly bored with each other by then, so we set about figuring out what the patterns stood for, and, well, one thing led to another.

“We realized we had found a route to the Old Country. It was like one of those nursery tales. We imagined an entire land, empty of human inhabitants but for some decorously laid-out skeletons in tattered robes. There would be heaps of jewels lying about. Old tomes explaining how to achieve wonderful powers. Empty castles.

“We grew positively fanatical about finding out how to open that gate, and yet it was mostly luck that we found the … well, call it a key, but it’s really more like a dance or a recipe. Anyhow, something full of elaborate steps and stages. We never would have found it, but it seems that one of our ancestors was just learning magic when querinalo came. I think he may have died fairly quickly, because no one knew that he’d left crib notes for his studies in his room. If they had known they would have found and destroyed them, for among other things, they contained the key for opening the gate. He’d copied it down without his teachers knowing. He thought he’d impress them by getting it letter-perfect.”

Tiniel got up and began changing Plik’s compresses. “I guess that’s something that runs in the family—the desire to impress.”

Plik coughed a very quiet laugh, and Isende grinned in shared understanding behind Tiniel’s back.

“So,” she continued with mock brightness, “we opened the gate, but what we found on the other side was nothing at all like our imaginings. What we found were the Once Dead and the Twice Dead, querinalo, and, really, pretty much the end to our freedom.”

“Who?”

Isende forced a smile. “Plik, that’s a long tale in itself, and you need to rest.”

Plik knew he did, but he had to try and reassure her.

“My friends,” he whispered. “Free us.”

Isende nodded. “I know you’re hoping to be rescued, but really you shouldn’t. Tiniel and I were curiosities, and so are you. As such, we have been kept alive and treated not too badly, but the Once Dead are as arrogant as their ancestors when it comes to those that they view as lesser beings—and by lesser they mean anyone who is not part of their tradition.”

She went on gently, seeing his distress, “The best thing you can hope for your friends is that they do not find the gate, and that if they do, they cannot find their way through. You see, if they do not die fighting against those who are already here, then certainly any of them with a scrap of talent will catch querinalo.”

“And,” Tiniel added somberly, “even if they survive, they will be so badly ‘burnt’ by the disease’s fire that they will surely wish themselves dead.”

XXIII

DERIAN TURNED THE APPLES he was roasting at the edge of the coals, making a mental bet with himself how long would pass before Firekeeper and Blind Seer went outside to pace again. Unless they were asleep, the wolves rarely remained indoors long enough for the mud on Firekeeper’s feet to fully dry.

The scraps of documentation from the stronghold’s library that kept Derian amused—for a few had turned out to be written in Pellish—and Harjeedian deeply absorbed meant, of course, nothing to the barely literate wolf-woman.

When Harjeedian had dryly suggested that this might be an opportunity for Firekeeper to start learning to read more than the ten or twelve Liglimosh symbols she had memorized a year or so before, Blind Seer had so obviously agreed that Firekeeper had begun an effort to at least memorize the Pellish alphabet.

However, her gaze rose so frequently from the characters Derian had written with charcoal on a piece of broken lumber that Derian doubted she would remember much. He thought Blind Seer might be learning more. At least the wolf’s blue-eyed gaze remained more fixed on the characters, but then he might have simply been daydreaming. It was hard to tell.

Derian was about to ask if Blind Seer wanted reading lessons when a man flickered into sight across the fire.

Firekeeper leapt to her feet, blade in hand. Blind Seer went from drowsing contemplative to snarling monster before the apple Derian had dropped hit the ashes. Lovable squawked alarm from her watch post in one of the trees in the courtyard.

Only Harjeedian and Truth did not react: Harjeedian because he was too absorbed in his reading to notice the disturbance, Truth because she all too obviously recognized their visitor—and perhaps was the only one to have had warning of his coming.

“Good to see you all so alert,” the Meddler said. As before, his form was mostly solid, but if Derian concentrated he could see the wall through the image. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I saw most of your company was here and …”

Firekeeper slid her Fang back into its sheath and resumed her seat on a blanket folded on the flagstone floor. Blind Seer’s snarl was slower to fade. He remained standing, his hackles raised. Harjeedian looked up now, and Derian found himself reluctantly admiring the aridisdu’s poise, for surely Harjeedian had been as startled as the rest of them.

“You have returned,” Harjeedian said. “Truth has told us such manifestations are draining for you. Therefore, there must be some important reason for this honor. I would offer you a seat, but …”

The Meddler leaned back against the nearest wall—or at least gave the impression of doing so. Derian saw that his shoulder actually sunk a half-finger’s depth into the stone. The Meddler must have noticed, too, for that error was corrected almost as soon as noted.

“I have come to share with you,” the Meddler said, “some information that may color your decisions regarding an attempt to rescue Plik. Truth has done me the great courtesy of keeping me briefed, so I know what you have found here, and even of Blind Seer’s clever plan for bringing someone to you from whom you could then learn the key to opening the gate.”

Blind Seer did not relax at this praise. If anything, he became more guarded. No one else commented, and the Meddler continued.

“As I said earlier, I did not know this stronghold contained a gate, but I do know something of gates. When I realized that you were unlikely to find the key to the gate here in this stronghold, I resolved to see if I could learn anything at the other end.”

“Other end?” Derian said. “You mean you know where this gate leads?”

“I had a suspicion,” the Meddler said, “and my researches make me think my suspicion is correct. May I say a few words about the nature of gates?”

“If you have the strength,” Firekeeper replied, with something almost like courtesy.

“For this, I do,” the Meddler said, favoring her with a warm smile.

Derian remembered that Firekeeper said she had seen the Meddler with a wolf’s head, and wondered how that expression translated.

The Meddler’s smile faded, and his tone became a mimicry of Harjeedian’s pedantry. “First, you must understand that these gates, while rather wonderful, are as limited as any other tool. I kept those limitations in mind as I began my research.”

Truth gave a long, elaborate yawn for which there was no need of translation.

The Meddler grinned and shrugged. “Very well. I will spare you the details of my research. Simply put, gates enable a vast amount of distance to be crossed, but the destination point must be fixed. In other words, gates are much like any other door, only the threshold between rooms is wider. Even in the great days of magic, when sorcerers ruled all the nations of the world, the gates were almost impossibly expensive to construct, both in terms of the magical power that must be expended and the physical components that must be used. Therefore, it was unlikely that any person or group would contemplate construction of more than one. This meant the gates were of limited utility until someone came up with the bright idea of having all gates share one destination.”

“One?” Harjeedian said. “Wouldn’t people risk crashing into each other?”

“One general destination,” the Meddler clarified. “A nexus. The creation of a nexus meant that if someone, say, from here wanted to go to Hawk Haven—assuming there was a gate in Hawk Haven—they would not go directly to the Hawk Haven gate, but first to the nexus. Then they would walk to the gate that had an endpoint in Hawk Haven and leave from there.”

“Interesting,” Derian said, “and practical. Since each gate could have only two endpoints, the use of the nexus would save a lot of redundant construction.”

“The arrangement was practical from more than one standpoint,” the Meddler agreed, “and before the lovely spotted lady yawns again, I would like to stress that I
am
getting to the point. The other reason this nexus system was very practical was that—as those of you with suspicious minds will have already thought—gates could be very dangerous indeed in, say, time of war. Why bother to load armies onto ships or mount them upon horses if the soldiers could march one by one through a door and end up hundreds or even thousands of days’ journey distant?”

“Would this nexus stop them?” Harjeedian asked. “Couldn’t a private gate between destinations be constructed?”

“You are forgetting the expense involved in building such gates,” the Meddler said. “However, assuming that some power was rich enough not only to prepare an invading force, but also to build a gate into the area to be invaded, the nexus system provided another safeguard as well.

“Use of the gates created a ripple or surge that could be detected by those who were skilled in this form of magic. The governing body of the central nexus employed those who could do this. Initially, they did this in order to anticipate use of their facility. However, soon they realized the fringe benefit that these watching sorcerers would be fairly certain to detect the use of a gate, even if it was not tied into their network.”

“And as the building of a secret gate would be rather suspicious,” Harjeedian said, “in and of itself—no matter what excuses the builder made—international security would be assured.”

“That,” the Meddler agreed, “was the idea. Well, needless to say, this nexus could not belong to any one nation. It was built on neutral territory, on an archipelago of large islands surrounded by nothing but sea. Despite the isolation, supplying the inhabitants was not difficult. There were the gates, after all. Nor did those who worked there suffer from the loneliness of their post If they chose, they could go to their homelands at almost any time.

“Despite this relative oneness of purpose, security on many levels was fierce. The oceans were reported to have been stocked with monsters. I don’t know if this was true, but enough people believed this that no captain lightly took his ship into the forbidden areas. The magical security was also excellent. As you know from Truth’s demonstration a few days ago, there are ways other than the use of gates by which one can travel over intervening distances without physically passing through the space. Precautions were taken so that even those possessing that specialized ability could not reach the nexus. Should they try, it would seem to them as if they had smashed against a wall of stone. There were other precautions as well, marvelous and complex, but I will spare you the details, for I cannot believe that most of these still exist.

“What matters is this. When I learned there was a gate here in this stronghold, I made the logical assumption that this gate, like all the rest, went, if not to the nexus I had known, then to one very much like it. However, given the security arrangements that were already in place at the nexus, I believed that when gates to the New World were created, they would terminate at the same point.”

“Makes sense,” Derian said. “After all, my bet is that most of those who used that gate out in the courtyard didn’t want to go to another point in the New World. They would have wanted a fast way to get to some place in the Old World. That nexus would have been perfect.”

“So,” Firekeeper’s husky voice interjected, tight and impatient, “you go there, Meddler? You go this nexus? You go how Truth goes?”

“I tried to reach the nexus,” the Meddler said, “and I failed, but even that failure told me a great deal. You see, the reason I failed was that the barriers against entering the nexus remain intact. They might not have been quite as elegant as in the days I remember, but they were quite enough to stop a bodiless fellow like myself. Moreover, I could sense that the power maintaining them was not latent—not left from the days before the Plague. It was new power, unpolished by the standards I had known, but no less a barrier.”

Derian nodded. “A finely finished granite wall without a visible seam, and a heap of roughly mortared rocks both will serve to keep an invader out.”

“Correct,” the Meddler said, giving Derian one of those smiles that so reminded him of his uncle. “And that rough stone wall might even do a better job since all the effort is going into making it strong, none into making it pretty.”

Harjeedian set beside him the papers he had been holding. “So after all this time, the nexus remains active. How, I wonder? Did the Divine Retribution not slay those who dwelled there? I would have thought they would have been particularly susceptible, for all of them must have had some skill in magic.”