The Last Wolfrider
They called her the last pure-blooded Wolfrider.
It was nonsense, of course. Centuries of howls had idolized the Wolfriders of Redlance’s day – but there was nothing special in their particular mixture of elf and wolf blood. Elves had lived and died before with more wolf blood, elves like Rahnee and Prey-Pacer and Freetfoot. Even among the elders of Redlance’s clan – all long dead now – there had been subtle differences in the blend of elf and wolf essences. Strongbow’s blood had been minutely more lupine than Moonshade’s. Did that make him a “purer” Wolfrider? By that logic the only truly pure Wolfrider had been Timmorn Yellow-Eyes, the perfect harmony of elf and wolf.
Only there had been no harmony in Timmorn’s soul, if the howls were to be believed.
But Mink knew that logic appealed little to the Wolfriders of the present. Descendants of the original Evertree clan and the Go-Back refugees who had settled there some thousand years past, they were an odd mix of wolfbloods and immortals. It was said that the Go-Backs had once been Wolfriders themselves, in the days of Two-Spear, and old Redlance had hoped to unite the tribes within the Evertree. Wolfrider and stagrider had shared meat, shared furs, shared blood.
Perhaps half the tribe still had some wolfblood. In some elves it was strong enough to be scented out from birth. In others, it lay dormant for years. Sometimes, face-fur in the males was the only real indication. The wolves did not seem to mind; they bonded with the elves that they willed, regardless of blood. For years, the children of Timmain had thought it was their wolfblood that called their animal friends to them. But it seemed it was more the whispers of elf-blood in the wolves that made the bond possible.
Still, the mortal elves claimed their whisper of wolfblood as a mark of honor. Only the mortal elves truly belonged here, they declared proudly. The immortal elves were nothing but visitors to the World of Two Moons. But the Wolfriders could claim the soil and the air as theirs. And if inevitable death was the price for belonging, then so be it. It was the Way.
Mink had learned that lesson from birth. She had been brought up to hunt and to howl, and to risk her life in the course of living it to the fullest. She had seen wolf-friends come and go. She had held her sire’s hand as he fell into his final sleep. She had helped lay her mother’s empty shell to rest among the roots of the Evertree.
She had Recognized an immortal, and borne two children – one with the trace of wolfblood, one without. Her immortal son had left for the sunlight of Oasis, but her mortal daughter remained in the Evertree, raising the next generation of Wolfriders.
The Wolfriders were meant to live in the Now, but the Go-Backs kept count of the seasons. So the Evertree kept time as well as the Way, and Mink knew her years numbered over three thousand. And the wolf in her was almost exhausted.
She kept to her furs now, her muscles too wasted to hold her upright. Her wrinkled skin had grown thin as birch bark, and sores would erupt on her joints if her lifemate did not turn her in bed. Handsome Wren, who had aged alongside her, yet kept the face she remembered from her youth. Though she was having trouble making out his features now. On bad days she could only see him as a blur of silver hair and ruddy skin.
But her ears were as sharp as ever, and every night he would sing to her: Wolfrider howls he’d learned from his mother and human rhymes he’d picked up from his father Door. She wondered if his rich voice could ever sound as sweet to spirit ears.
She’d been frightened, at first, to Recognize an immortal. She knew what became of such pairings: death and heartbreak, or a healer’s touch and the purging of the wolf’s blood. Swift’s folk in the Great Holt had all given up their mortal blood, and so their homeland. The only Wolfriders who lived in Oasis were the immortal kind. Most did not even ride wolves anymore.
She had feared the day Wren would demand she come to Oasis and rid herself of the wolf winthin her. Yet never once in all their years together had he asked her to live for him. He understood her too well. Even in Recognition, she could only truly belong to herself. The choice had to be hers.
Sometimes, she wished she had been born in a time before choice. When Wolfriders lived and died in blissful ignorance, accepting death and pain because they knew no better.
“Mink? Can you hear me? Are you still with us?”
It wasn’t Wren’s voice, warm and lyrical. No, this voice was gruffer, full of burrs and brambles.
“Strayshot…” Mink replied, without opening her eyes. Why bother, when all she would see was a wash of muted color? **Back already?**
“It’s nearly dawn,” he said gently.
She sniffed the air: blood on his fingers, but she couldn’t place the scent. Her nose still worked, but her memory was full of holes. **Was it a good hunt?**
“We caught a tusk-hog. I brought you the liver.”
Her mouth wanted to water, but couldn’t. Her tongue felt swollen as she tried to make the words. “Food…” **to a dying elf? That’s wasted meat.**
A weak laugh. “I suppose so. Are you still taking water? Shall I fetch your cup?”
Another elf might have insisted she eat a little liver, might have chewed it for her and coaxed it past her lips, then rubbed her throat to make her swallow. Not Strayshot.
**Water, yes.**
She felt the cup at her lips. She tried to drink, but she couldn’t hold her head up, and most of it spilled down her chin. She didn’t mind. It felt cool on her dry skin.
She heard the soft snort of disgust from Strayshot. “It’s not a pretty thing, is it?” she croaked, as she blinked up at him. Even out of focus, Strayshot’s scowl was apparent.
**We talk about the wolf lying down. It sounds so gentle. But this… this isn’t gentle.**
“We seldom see the wolf lie down, do we? When their times comes, they leave the Holt to die alone. Perhaps they are the wiser ones.”
**I’m sorry my dying disgusts you so.**
“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my teeth.”
**At any rate, it will be over soon.**
“Does it hurt?”
**Yes. But I don’t mind. I… want to feel it. All of it.**
“You’ll be beyond that all soon enough. Shed this… withered husk and fly free. No more pain, no more struggle… just an endless abiding peace. You must be eager for it.”
**Not as eager as you, I think.**
“What do you mean?”
She let out a sharp laugh, that soon became a struggle for breath. **You know what I mean, my young uncle.**
“You must rest,” Strayshot reprimanded sternly. “Don’t tire yourself.”
“I’m taking too long… aren’t I?” Mink rasped. Of course she was. Every day she refused to die was another check to his ambition, another day he had to content himself with living in her shadow. She was the granddaughter of Strongbow, daughter of One-Eye, born of Recognition to two full-blooded Wolfriders long before his mother had ever laid eyes on a green-growing place.
The names of the Evertree’s founders still carried great weight about the Wolfriders. Strayshot had scarcely known the archer who’d fathered him, but he considered himself the true heir of the Wolfrider Way. Certainly he had Strongbow’s sharp features and that same scent of restlessness about it. Discontent… and under it, a deep-seated insecurity. A wolf forever snapping at shadows.
“We will howl for you,” Strayshot said. “Daughter of Kit and One-Eye… last of her kind. Who stared down death, unafraid, who embraced her wolfblood to the last. As her mother did. As her father did. As my father did.”
Strongbow had done as so many had before him: slipped away from the Holt to die in peace and solitude. Mink remembered how a young Strayshot had wept angry tears, and how his Go-Back mother had been unable to understand his anguish.
**So much left unfinished… so much left to learn...**
“Your life has been an inspiration to us all,” he went on. “As your death will be. Whenever a strong heart falters, or a weak will breaks, we will say ‘Remember Mink. She knew how to meet death like a true Wolfrider. She knew life is all the sweeter for its shortness.’”
“Save your howls, she’s not dead yet,” Wren spoke up, somewhere beyond her field of vision.
“My chief,” Strayshot said blandly, moving away. Mink heard the soft scuffle of feet at the door of her den: one elf forcing another to give way.
Wren took his place at Mink’s side. She tried to lift her hand from the furs, but could only manage an irritable twitch. He understood, and folded her thin hand within his own.
**You stood aside for him.** She could not quite keep the disapproval out of her sending. **He will remember that.**
“Let him bluster. I don’t care.”
**That’s not a wolf’s answer.**
He smiled bashfully. “I never made a good wolf, did I?”
**No…** she answered honestly. **But you’ve made a fine chief. Redlance would be proud.**
“The hunters won’t follow me, after…”
No, they probably wouldn’t. The elders in the Holt remembered well how Redlance had chosen Wren to carry on the traditions of the Evertree. But the hunters saw only a chief who had never managed to bond with a wolf. Strayshot and his packmates had made it very clear that Wren led only by virtue of his lifemate’s blood.
**I wish I could hold out longer,** Mink sent apologetically. **I don’t want to end this before I have to.**
“Lifemate. You’ve been so brave.”
**No. I chose this life… and all it means. I wanted to know everything.**
He pressed her hand to his lips. “Always so curious. Always so stubborn.”
“I’m not ready,” Mink whispered. For the first time in days, fear tightened her throat. **I’m not ready. But… I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.**
“And you’re certain? Forgive me, but I have to ask…”
She fought to swallow. She wasn’t certain at all. “I’ve made my choice,” she croaked. “Tell Waykeeper… call them now.”
Tears were welling in Wren’s eyes as he nodded.
* * *
Pain shot throughout her limbs as she felt Wesh’s arms lift her up from the furs. She was glad of it. The pain made her more alert, forced her to take in every sensation. The roughness of the furs against her fragile skin. The nip of the night air on her cheeks. The scent of damp grass. She drew in a sharp breath, determined to savor every moment.
“Waykeeper!” Strayshot exclaimed. “Wren! What are you doing?”
The question was answered as the scent of ozone filled the air. Mink saw the flash of light even through her closed eyelids. The Palace had landed in the clearing jus beyond the Evertree.
Strayshot hissed. He never welcomed the Palace’s arrival – the reminder of other tribes, with other ways. “Have they come to say farewell?” he asked.
Wesh did not answer as he continued towards the Palace. Each step made Mink’s bones rattle. She wasn’t aware the whimper that had escaped her until she heard her stepfather murmur, “Almost there.”
“Where are they taking her?” Mink heard a child’s voice ask.
“She wants to lay down her skin inside the Palace,” Strayshot replied uncertainly.
“Why?”
“Everyone chooses different places, I guess.”
The light grew brighter. Mink clenched her eyes tightly shut and buried her cheek against the harsh bristles of her fur. She was aware of other elves approaching, exchanging sendings with Wesh and Wren – faint buzzings of magic at the edge of her ever-dulling mind.
A male’s voice, gentle like Wren’s. “Lay her down here.”
A female’s, pitched high. “You left it far too late.”
“It was her call, not ours,” Wren explained.
Mink whimpered again as Wesh lowered her onto a hard surface. She blinked in the harsh light. Her vision began to clear under the magical aura of the Palace, and she could make out faces clearly for the first time in years.
Wren, standing by her head, his gaze full of loving concern. Duskwind at her right side, the auburn-haired healer and lifemate of her daughter Sunstill. At her left, an elf very much like Duskwind, though fairer-skinned and lighter-haired. And at her feet, a dark-skinned maiden with cropped silver hair and violet eyes.
“Let us begin,” Rain said.
The maiden at the foot of the crystal bed closed her eyes and held up her hands. Magic shimmered around her as light poured down from the ceiling to bathe her in a sparkling glow. When she opened her eyes again, they had turned a bright turquoise.
“Winnowill?” Rain asked.
“I am ready,” the maiden’s voice had dropped to a throaty purr. “As we discussed. I will purge the impurities, Rain will focus on reconstruction, and Duskwind will manage the pain.” She cocked an eyebrow. “There will be quite a lot of it, I’m afraid.”
Mink drew a breath and closed her eyes. Her hand groped feebly for Wren’s.
**Don’t let go,** she sent.
He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. **Never.**
She tried to focus on the warm of his palm, the softness of his skin.
Then the three healers began their work, and the pain made her fingers clench so tightly she felt bones break. She couldn’t tell if they were hers or his.
* * *
Dawn came and went. The sun rose over the forest. The wolves sought out the shade to nap, while the Wolfriders continued to sit vigil outside the Palace.
Strayshot began to grumble. It wasn’t right, he protested. The last trueborn Wolfrider should shed her skin in the green-growing place, not inside the crystal walls. The tribe should be allowed to lay her body it to rest among the roots of the Evertree.
At last the door opened in the side of the Palace, and the elves who had entered hours before slowly filed out. Duskwind first, dazed and supported by his great-grandfather Rain. Then the Waykeeper emerged with Chief Wren. They carried a third elf between them, a long-haired stranger who struggled to walk barefoot over the grass. The stranger lifted her head, and an almost-familiar face gazed out at the tribe.
An anxious murmur rose up from the Wolfriders. They all knew that face, but they couldn’t quite place it. They knew the deerskin dress too, though it hung poorly on the maiden’s frame, as if it had been cut for a slighter elf.
Sunstill was the first to break the silence, to run up to embrace the stranger with a joyful cry of “Mother!”
Mink smiled wearily as she lifted an arm to embrace her daughter.
A stunned silence prevailed for a moment longer. Then Strayshot’s angry shout echoed in the clearing.
“TRAITOR! Waybreaker! You’ve murdered the wolf within you! You’ve no place among true Wolfriders!”
If the pureblooded elves were nothing but interlopers on the World of Two Moons, Mink supposed there was no better place to embrace her new destiny than the utterly alien Blue Mountain. She knew something of living inside stone walls from her many visits to Wren’s family in Oasis. But sandstone shaped by magic and pierced throughout by great skylights was worlds removed from these dark tunnels hewn by pickaxes and peopled with elves and trolls and their half-breed descendants.
“I hope you’re settling in,” Shenshen said cheerfully, as she led Mink down one such hallway. They were close to the surface, and tiny peepholes allowed natural light to mingle with the strange glowing stones that served as lamps.
“And you like your rooms? We knew you’d want ones topside. They’re not too green, are they? I thought the stained clearstone would make it feel more like your Evertree, but if it’s too much, you must let know.”
“They’re fine,” Mink insisted. “They’re… big. I think you could fit half the Evertree inside our sleep-den.”
“We call them bedrooms here.”
“Bedrooms, yes.” She had to learn a whole new language inside Blue Mountain.
“And Parra is working out? I know, I know – you don’t need a maidservant. But it’s the troll way. All the matrons were pushing their daughters to serve in your rooms. If I didn’t give the post to someone I would never hear the end of it. I told her you’d rather a soft touch – that you’re used to doing things on your own.”
She wasn’t, actually. The last years of her old life had left her a prisoner inside a failing body. Wren had fed her, bathed her, turned her in their bed so the furs wouldn’t rub her skin raw. It was a novelty to be able to perform such simple functions as sitting up unaided or lift a cup to her lips.
“She’s very thoughtful,” Mink insisted. “But… why does she keep calling me Princess?”
“Because you’re part of the family – that makes you royalty. And Wren is chief of the Wolfriders – that would make him an archduke at the very least.” She saw Mink’s confusion and laughed. “Trolls do love their titles.”
“I suppose I have a lot to get used to. But Wren’s not chief anymore. He gave his lock to Sunstill.”
“Well, yes, of course. But whenever he goes back, surely–”
“No.” There was no going back now. Not after the way they’d ended things with Strayshot and the others.
She had known it wouldn’t be easy, turning her back on the Way. She had expected the reproaches, the cold disapproval of her tribemates. And she had planned to leave the Holt, to break with her old life completely. But she hadn’t reckoned on being forced out so quickly. She had hoped for time to adjust to her new life. She hadn’t reckoned on the depths of Strayshot’s rage.
Eight days was all it had taken. Eight days of constant verbal assaults and public shamings. Eight days of brave fighting on Wren’s part, as he tried to defend his lifemate’s choice. But to Strayshot and his fellow hunters there was no defense. Mink had squandered her birthright. She had taken the coward’s path. She had cut out the best part of her.
“And for what?” Strayshot’s accusations rang in her ears. “Eternity inside your skin? It’s been nothing but a painful cage for years. You could have broken free – become lighter than air – become pure! But you cling to the inside of your cage and you kill the wolf who has come to free you!”
“If death is so appealing, Strayshot, go seek it yourself!” Wren had protested. But Strayshot wouldn’t be silenced. He continued to rant to anyone would who listen – and it seems many elves were listening. Ever her own grandson, Sparkstone, took to muttering that he could never imagine giving up his wolfblood.
“Why do you think she did it?” Mink overheard him whispering to his lifemate. “Do you think she was just afraid to die? But she’d been dying for years – why would she lose her nerve at the end?”
As if dying was the ultimate test of bravery. She wanted to blame the Go-Backs and their warrior ways for infecting her tribe. But during her long decline, she had had plenty of time to admit that the seeds of death-love had been sown among the Wolfriders since the day they learned of their own mortality.
“Losing your wolfblood… how can you be the same soul after that? I love living, I do! But I’d rather die as myself than live as someone else!”
Sparkstone hadn’t meant her to overhear. He’d apologized as humbly as she could have wished. But after that she knew she could not stay at the Evertree another day.
“It was the pact we had made long ago,” Mink told Shenshen now. It wasn’t a lie, she reasoned. Only the gentlest part of the truth. “I would live out my years as my parents had – as a Wolfrider of the Evertree. I would learn all I could of the mortal path. And then if I chanced to live enough to die a natural death, I would surrender my wolfblood and choose a new path with Wren. He’s been slowly tiring of the chief’s lock for years, I think. It was time to pass it on to Sunstill.”
No one challenged the transfer of power, not even Strayshot. Sunstill was a Wolfrider born and raised in the Holt, after all. She had borne Wolfrider children to the tribe’s healer. Whether she could lead where before she had only followed was another matter. Time would tell.
“I gave my first life to the Way,” Mink went on. “Now I live for myself.”
“And your lifemate! I’m sure Wren is glad to know he has forever now.”
“He’d always have me. Whatever happened. And forever is never a promise. Immortals die just as Wolfriders. My own mother died well before her time. But she and her lifemate are still together.”
“Well, you must admit, they’re a special case. At any rate – you must be glad to have your old body back – I mean – your young body!” She tittered with nervous laughter.
Mink looked down at her hands, smooth and nimble-fingered. “This body is a stranger to me now,” she admitted softly.
“And now you can have all the fun of getting reacquainted,” Shenshen remarked with a knowing smirk.
Mink smiled ruefully. Shenshen probably imagined feats of unbounded athleticism and sensory overload. Racing wolves at night and wildly joining with Wren for hours on end. Mink held her tongue so as not to disappoint. In truth, she was still overwhelmed by the ability to walk again, to draw a deep breath without pain. The feeling of smooth skin under her palms, of heavy, glossy hair that spilled down her back once more – these were the current limits of her reawakening sensuality.
“We had always planned to go to Oasis,” Mink said, to fill the silence. “It’s always been hard for Wren to be so far from his twin. But then Skylark Recognized your Gem, and we thought…” she let the thought trail away.
“Well, we’re all so glad you’re here. And I do hope you decide to stay for a while – at least until Windstone is grown. It’s so good that she’ll get to know her father’s family too.” She lowered her voice. “I think Lark’s quite worried that she’ll grow up to be a troll at heart, with only Gem and our family as examples.”
“That sounds like Lark.”
Mink followed Shenshen down the tunnel, towards a distant murmur that gradually grew into a roar of overlapping voices. Mink felt a pang of sadness. When she’d had her wolfblood, she could have identified individual voices in a crowd even from a distance. Now it was all a blur of sound.
Strayshot would say she had become less than she was. At that moment she couldn’t disagree with him.
A puff of cooler air stirred her hair about her face. Mink inhaled deeply, shivering with pleasure. She smelled fresh air and the distant tang of pine needles.
“Are you warm enough?” Shenshen asked. She gestured to Mink’s clothes – a worn doeskin dress, recently cut and resewn to fit her new proportions. “Would you like a cloak?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re still so frail – I don’t want you to get cold.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I seem to burn hot these days. Suppose it’s because I’ve been used to being cold for so long; I don’t quite know what to do with ‘warm.’” She reached out to finger the trailing sleeve of Shenshen’s olive green gown. It was a like dreamberry vision of a High One’s dress – impractically long, laced provocatively tight, covered in gold overlay. Mink couldn’t imagine how Shenshen could ever run or climb in it. But then, a royal elf of Blue Mountain had little reason to do either.
“But I suppose this silk-fur will be more practical come winter. It is marvellously soft. What do you call it, again?”
“Velvet,” Shenshen supplied. “I can lend you a gown or two if you like. And tomorrow we can go down the loomworks and order you up some of your own. We have a nice purple that I think will be go perfectly against your skin.”
The source of the cooler air became apparent. The tunnel ended in a great circular arena. The roof was an open hole to the sky, and the grayish light of an autumn day poured down on the two competitors wrestling in the sand to the cheers of the audience.
“Ah, there’s your lad,” Shenshen said, pointing to the royal bench. Where the common trolls watched the wrestling match from simple stone seats, Wren and his twin brother Skylark sat on an ornately carved stone bench, laden with silk pillows and thick furs. Mink couldn’t imagine a pair of brothers looking more different. Wren paired his mother’s shorter Wolfrider stature with his father’s silver hair and pale skin, while Skylark was tall as a Glider, his skin tanned by the Oasis sun, his long hair a fierce red-gold. Whereas Wren always seemed to sit so meekly – his knees together and his shoulders slightly hunched as if he longed to shrink from sight – Skylark sprawled on the couch, every inch an entitled Glider lord. Wren had said that the only thing that tempered Skylark’s disappointed at taking up residence in Blue Mountain was knowing that he’d be called “prince” in an adoring voice by every troll he met.
Between them, the twins dangled the reason for Skylark’s oft-bemoaned “exile” – a fire-haired toddler who squealed excitedly and gestured to be allowed higher. Laughing goodnaturedly, the twins released the girl, and she floated up, until a firm hand on the hem of her overskirt kept her from going higher.
“Another Glider for Blue Mountain,” Shenshen remarked. “Two-Edge said it makes the old stone happy.”
Mink indicated a second, higher royal bench, further along the arena’s circle. A broad-chested, bearded elf sat on a similarly arrayed couch, next to a troll female decked in gold and velvet. Her brassy-gold hair was teased in the most remarkable style, resembling nothing so much as horns. “That must be Smokewater,” Mink said. “And…”
“Kaleev, his consort.” **His… most recent one,** Shenshen’s sigh of exasperation was evident in locksending. **I do like her, though, don’t misunderstand. I just hope this time sticks.**
**Is it… always trolls for him?**
“He has a type.”
They stood at the upper railing of the arena and gazed down at the competitors. A tall, gray-skinned troll – he must have elf blood, Mink reasoned – squared off against a ruddy-faced elf maid with blunt features and cropped white-blond hair.
“There’s my Gem,” Shenshen said. “Oh, she’s up against Smokewater’s boy! We came at the right time – they’ve been laying gold on this match for days.”
“He has how many children now?”
“Seven. Henrek there is his second-born.”
Henrek fought bare-chested and as he circled his opponent Mink could see the many scars lacing his shoulders and back. As if reading her mind, Shenshen remarked, “He’s a terror when you put an axe in his hand – he led three battles against the trolls of King Stryker. But I’ve got gold on Gem.”
Mink could see why. Just as tall as Henrek, Gem was built as solidly as a Go-Back of old, and she moved with the grace of a cat. She easily sidestepped each attempt to tackle her, preferring to come at him from his blind spot. While Henrek tired himself out with charge after aborted charge, Gem waited patiently for her moment to strike.
When the moment came, she struck like a snake. Henrek was up-ended before he knew what hit him. Then it was just the short work of keeping him pinned until the judge could count to ten. His bulk counted for nothing while he flailed on his back like an overturned turtle. Gem’s long limbs kept his caged. When the judge ruled in her favor, the crowd cheered: none louder than little Windstone. Skylark simply shook his head and offered up a half-hearted applause. But even from a distance, Mink could spot the proud smile tugging at the corner of his unwilling lips.
**Is it true Skylark saved Gem from the fighting pits when they were captured by King Stryker’s trolls?** Mink asked. **Wren swears by it, but I after seeing this, I wonder if Lark wasn’t pulling his tail.**
**Oh, it’s true. Those cursed Strykers had Gem in a pit with a bear of all things! Skylark flew in to pull her out. And both of them sick from fighting Recognition’s call, to hear them tell it!** She smirked. **Though they were both just fine by the time they made it back home, so I suspect that bear pit was the moment they both decided to stop fighting fate.**
“We should call you Gem Kinbreaker!” Smokewater boomed from his seat by way of congratulations.
“Better that than ‘Princess,’” Gem threw back with a laugh, before she shook her head to scatter the sweat from her hair. Shenshen let out a mournful sigh.
“I always used to dream about having a little girl I could dress up in velvet.”
“You have granddaughters,” Mink pointed out.
“I do. Six of them now. And eighteen great-grandchildren, and another one on the way! Oh, how I laugh when I think of my days in Sorrow’s End, stuck in my sister’s shadow, hoping to shine with my own light. If you’d told me then that I’d been called ‘Princess’ by a kingdom of trolls – and that I would help birth a new race of beings, neither troll nor elf – well, I would have called you sun-touched.”
“I wouldn’t have thought elf and troll would breed easily.”
“They don’t. Oh, Smokewater’s first consort had a miserable time of it. So many losses before she had her little girl.. so many winding shrouds. Mind you, Leetah tells me elves and trolls shouldn’t be able to breed at all. It’s all Winnowill’s doing, I think. When she had Two-Edge she had to change herself somehow – just as your Timmain when she bore the first Wolfrider chief. Two-Edge and all his blood are the only ones who can breed true with elf and troll alike.” Shenshen grinned. “It’s magic and I’ve been blessed to share in it. My heart was always drawn to the bringing of life, you see. Nothing’s more wonderful than the moment a newborn slips into my waiting hands. It was a thirst I could never slake among elves. But here in Blue Mountain I’m always kept busy. From that first company of misfits we rescued, our kingdom’s grown to five thousand trolls and trollkin – and I helped birth nearly every one!”
“I suppose we all find our place in this world, given enough time,” Mink said.
“We’ll find you a place here too,” Shenshen offered. “When you’re rested and ready.”
“I’m ready now. Truly, Shenshen. I’ve spent too long at rest.”
“You weren’t resting. You were surviving! Wren tells me you fought a constant battle just to stay alive another day.”
“It was hard work,” she admitted. “Some days harder than others. I… I suppose I made it harder than it needer to be. I should have called for the healers long ago. I told myself I was determined to learn every lesson of my wolfblood… to truly feel what it meant to die as a mortal.”
The truth was, she’s been afraid, not of her coming death, but of her new life.
“The truth is, I’m used to toil. I made everything more difficult than it needs to be, just to feel the the joy of striving. It’s… Wesh says it’s a Wolfrider failing – maybe he’s right. I just know I need to be kept busy.”
Shenshen laid a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. There’s more than enough work to go around here.”
* * *
Shenshen showed Mink around the upper levels of the mountain. The trolls were slowly rebuilding the mountain from the rubble of the Egg’s collapse, but the bulk of their world remained underground. Mink pleaded weariness before Shenshen could escort her to the lower tunnels. In truth, she had enough newness for one day. She craved the familiarity of sleep. This she remembered well how to do.
She undressed in her cavernous sleep-den, by the green light of the tinted clearstone windows. Instead of sinking into a hollow in the wood, she climbed atop a dais and a mattress stuffed with feathers. Instead of furs, she slid between silk sheets.
She slept, and dreamed of running through the forest. When she awoke, the sun had set beyond the green clearstone, and Wren was sitting up in bed beside her. The strange smells of troll food teased at her nose.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, automatically, before she became aware of the emptiness in her stomach. “Maybe a little.”
Supper was a bowl of spiced stew. Mink made a face at the texture, but cleaned her bowl and asked for seconds. Once she began eating, she couldn’t seem to stop, not even when a heavy stone replaced the emptiness in her belly. Wren had to gently stop her from asking for a third portion.
“Rain warned us about this, remember?”
He still spoke as her nurse, not her lovemate. She supposed it was only to be expected.
It was hard to sleep at night. Mink watched the faint moonlight track across the floor and tried to remember the sounds of the forest.
Wren slept beside her, his body a handspan from hers. In the Holt, he’d slept wrapped in his own fur, a further wall between them. But under the sheets in this troll-bed, she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
She slid her hand towards his, shyly brushing her fingertips over his knuckles. Heat bloomed deep inside her belly, frightening in its intensity, and she snatched her hand away. Wren did not stir.
Mink turned her back to him and curled in on herself. Her shoulders were shaking, and she didn’t know whether she was fighting the urge to laugh or to weep.
* * *
Shenshen’s gowns did not suit Mink. They were too restrictive, too cumbersome. But Gem loaned her a long velvet surcoat, and while it swam on Mink’s smaller frame, it felt more like proper clothes. Shenshen tsked goodnaturedly, then took Mink to the loomworks and ordered her a whole wardrobe of surcoats and tunics.
Next, she showed Mink the archives. “You’re a howlpainter like your mother, aren’t you? I thought you’d like to see how we keep track of our stories.”
The trolls didn’t paint their words down on banners and scrolls, but on squares of thin hide, pressed and bound together on one side. Mink marvelled at the construction – she had heard her parents speak of “books” but she had never seen one before.
The chief scribe was a lame troll who introduced himself as Hydar. “Hydar the Lucky,” he said proudly.
“Why lucky?” Mink asked, trying hard not to glance at his clubfoot.
“Because I was the first troll born after the Uplift – first troll the Crown Princess helped birth! And because if we’d still been misfits when my mama dropped me, I would have been thrown on the midden. Or eaten,” he added with a cackle, and Mink couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Hydar showed her the records he’d been keeping for years, first under Brightmetal’s guidance, then on his own, then with a company of apprentice scribes. His proudest achievement was the family tree of Two-Edge, painstakingly etched into the rock, covering half the western wall of the archives.
“Lots of room for growth,” he added. “Even got a spot right there for Ilsa’s mump, Highness. What are the odds on that one, by the way?”
“Still betting high on a girl,” Shenshen said.
“Might as well throw in for a boy then,” Hydar decided.
Hydar spent days explaining the troll-script to Mink. It was the quite similar to the script first used by the Islander elves, lately adopted by Oasis for its recordkeeping. Symbols standing for sounds, sounds combining to make words – it seemed such a clumsy way to capture meaning compared to her mother’s lyrical symbols. Mink copied out a page of a birth registry in Wolfrider script, to show Hydar the difference. But without access to the proper colors, she had to resort to complicated analogies to translate the names, with their mixture of Glider and troll roots.
“Huh,” Hydar ruled skeptically. “Awfully fiddly scratchings for something as simple as a list of births. Where are the dates?”
“Dates?” Mink blinked. “You mean the days and years? They’re right here, after each name.”
“Well, that’s no good, lass! Uh, Your Highness, I should say. You need a proper grid if you’re to read it fast. This isn’t an epic poem, it’s just an inventory.”
“What’s an inventory?”
“I don’t think the archives are for me,” she told Wren at supper that night.
“Skylark and Gem are taking me hunting tomorrow. I think Smokewater is coming too. Why don’t you come along? If you feel strong enough, of course,” he added carefully. “
She hadn’t gone on a rideout since her last wolf-friend died fifty years past. Even then, she had been too frail to handle more than a gentle walk down the game trail. But the thought of being in a proper green-growing place again was too seductive to resist.
* * *
Mink should have known something wasn’t quite right when Shenshen and Kaleev insisted on accompanying them, dressed in long velvet gowns and cumbersome headwear. “Oh, we love to watch a good hunt, don’t we?” Shenshen said, and her son’s mate nodded eagerly.
They set out with a host of troll escorts, and the two princesses riding on zwoot-back. When Mink asked about the desert creatures, Gem laughed. “They’re part of Lark’s dowry. You know – the boodle he has to give his mate on their Joining Day.”
“And what did you give me?” Skylark muttered.
“A daughter. A title. Regular tuppings. What more do you want?”
Wren snorted with suppressed laughter. “You did get the better deal, brother.”
Skylark reached over and cuffed him upside the head.
Mink assumed they would head for the Forbidden Grove, to the south of the mountain ruins. But instead they went north, over the rolling plains. After a morning’s walk they stopped at a cluster of rocks and Mink watched as the troll servants erected a silk tent in the shadow of the boulders. Shenshen and Kaleev made them comfortable on cushions and invited Mink to join them.
“The boys will be gone for hours,” Shenshen said.
“A-hem!”
“The boys and Gem will be gone for hours,” she corrected. “But don’t worry. We’ll have a fine view of the action when they come back.”
Mink hesitated. A Wolfrider was meant to be at the heart of the chase. But the morning’s walk had tired her, and she knew she was in no shape to learn a new hunting style. So she took a seat between Shenshen and Kaleev and wished the hunters well. She thought they might take the zwoots with them, but they left the beasts tethered behind with the two servants who were preparing platters of food.
“What are they hunting?”
“Elk. A whole herd if we’re lucky.”
“On foot?” Wren and Skylark could float, at least, but Gem and Smokewater could not, and their five troll helpers were all pure-blooded, with stumpy legs unsuited to sprinting. How could they possibly run down a herd of elk?
“Have some fried bat wings,” Kaleev urged Mink as they waited.
“Be careful, it’s spicy,” Shenshen warned, one bite too late. Fortunately, they had packed a jug of dreamberry wine, and the familiar drink soothed the burning on Mink’s tongue. She tasted notes of juniper and honey.
“Wesh – Littlefire – makes a brew like this.”
“I got the recipe from him,” Shenshen explained. “The last time he visited Blue Mountain.”
They waited. They nibbled on troll delicacies. Kaleev shared stories of her childhood – Mink was surprised to learn she came from the Frozen Mountains. “Granddaughter of King Picknose,” she explained proudly. “They called me ‘Dumpling’ when I was a maid. Mother Shenshen helped me chose the name Kaleev when I came here. I like Kaleev better. It sounds more dignified. Everything is more dignified here, I find. Troll maids and matrons are treated like shiny baubles up north. Here, we’re respected. I must say, I didn’t hold out much hope when I saw the scrawny little thing Grandpapa wanted me to wed–”
Shenshen swatted her arm goodnaturedly. “But he’s a good prince and a fine consort,” Kaleev finished. “Even if he is so dreadfully pink!”
Mink smiled politely, inwardly trying to reconcile Smokewater’s massive proportions with “scrawny.” She wondered what Strayshot and the tribe would think of her now, eating cooked food and reclining on silk pillows.
After an hour or two, Mink was the first to spot a cluster of dots on the horizon. “Elk.”
The herd numbered perhaps twenty, and they were heading towards the tent at a moderate pace. Mink soon saw why. The hunters trailed behind the herd, harassing them with shouts and waves of their arms. Wren floated with Skylark, just above eye level with the herd leaders. When wolves hunted a herd, they tried to isolate a weakling. But the troll hunters seemed intent on keeping the elk together.
No one tried to attack. The object seemed simply to herd the beasts, as the Go-Backs had once done. The elk were growing more uneasy, but they did not panic, they did not stampede. They simply trotted ahead of their harassers. They had the stamina to outlast the trolls and elves.
Then Skylark deployed his talon-whip, striking the lead elk on the flank. The beast let out a shriek and began to run. The others followed close behind. The stampede began in earnest. The elk were heading straight for the tent. Surely they would turn around such an obstacle. Still, Mink got to her feet, ready to run.
Then the ground seemed to open up under the elk and the beasts at the front of the charge dropped from sight.
Shenshen and Kaleev sprang to their feet, applauding the spectacle.
The elk at the rear of the stampede saw the hole open up and tried to change course. Some made the turn in time, some did not. The survivors scattered across the plain, six confused and isolated beasts. But the hunters did not bother to pursue them. Instead they jogged up to the edge of the sinkhole to inspect their catch.
Mink hiked out to see. “Be careful, Mink!” Shenshen called. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”
The pit was some three hundred paces from the tent; Mink knelt down as close to the pit edge as she dared and looked down. She saw only blackness.
“How far?” she asked.
“Far enough for a clean kill!” Smokewater said proudly. “We’ll all eat well tonight.”
Mink made a face. “It doesn’t seem fair, somehow. They didn’t stand a chance.”
Skylark alighted on the ground nearby. “And they didn’t know what hit them. A few heartbeats of panic and a quick end. Better than some of those hunts I’ve seen at Oasis. Or in your Holt, for that matter. Wearing the animal down, letting them die slowly in pain and fear.”
“Giving them a fair fight,” Mink protested.
Skylark shrugged. “Well, you’d know more about death than I, sister.”
“I’d rather not see death coming, myself,” Gem spoke up. “Anyway, we didn’t get them all,” she pointed to the survivors, already halfway to the horizon line. “They’ll breed and the herd will rebuild. And in another year or two, we’ll do this again.”
“Feast and famine,” Wren remarked.
“We can’t do a cull like this all the time,” Gem said. “Anyway, we have plenty of food underground. The fresh meat’s just for special feasts.”
“Have you thought of hunting smaller game?” Mink asked as they headed back to the tent. “Ravvits and birds and the like?”
“How are we supposed to do that? These pit traps aren’t something you make up overnight. And those talon-whips only work with Gliders.”
“You have those crossbows, don’t you?”
“You ever tried to shoot distance with those things?”
“No,” Mink admitted. “Have you ever shot with a bow and arrows?”
“No,” Gem admitted.
“Wait – did the great Gem just concede a point?” Skylark quipped. “Great Sun!”
“Wren!” Gem ordered. Wren reached over and cuffed his brother upside the head.
* * *
The fifteen elk were butchered and portioned out: prime cuts for the larders, viscera for the cooking pots, hides and horns and hooves for the crafters. But the choicest elk was reserved for the royal family’s feast.
By now Mink knew enough to anticipate the scale of the “small family gathering” Shenshen promised. The immediate royal family outnumbered the entire Evertree tribe. They sat at three large tables in a cavernous dining hall. Two-Edge, Aroree, Brightmetal and Shenshen occupied the central table on a raised dais – Brightmetal cheerfully bouncing a giggling Windstone on his knee. One table was reserved for Gem, Skylark and their immediate family, plus the grandchildren of Smokewater. Smokewater himself, his consort and his many children occupied the third table.
“I’m thinking of asking Two-Edge if I can organize archery lessons,” Mink said as servants laid out the first course. “I don’t see why trolls can’t learn to use a bow and arrow instead of a crossbow. We could have regular hunts, rather than waiting for the herds for gather in the death-sleep. Of course, someone would have to keep track of all the meat coming in – with so many trolls to feed we could pick the land clean if we’re not careful. All hunting would have to be watched, controlled. But the trolls are so good at keeping count – I’m sure they’d see the wisdom of a record-keeper directing the hunt. What, Lark? Why are you smirking at me like that?”
“Wolfriders,” Skylark remarked. “Now even here a month and you’re already telling us how to run our kingdom.”
“It’s your kingdom is it, wisp?” Gem quipped.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Wren spoke up, shooting his brother a meaningful look. “And I’m sure Two-Edge would agree.”
Raised voices from the opposite table caught their attention. Smokewater’s ruddy cheeks had darkened to a deep mottled red– almost the exact color as his hair – as he vented his outrage on his consort. “What? And you didn’t consult me?! Slugscat, Dumpling, you know what I think about that wench!”
Kaleev was unmoved. “That ‘wench’ is your former consort, and the mother of your daughter.”
“She’s under exile! By letters patent! You can’t just go revoking–”
“Ilsa asked me to,” Kaleev countered pointedly. Smokewater swung around to face his pregnant daughter. Ilsa had the pointed ears and slightly slimmer build of a trollkin, but when she got to her feet to confront her father, her belly swelled out far wider than it would in any elf. She raised her pointed chin in a manner instantly reminiscent of Shenshen. A short, green-skinned troll Mink took to be the father-to-be put a supportive hand on the small of her back, but she slapped it away.
“I’m going to have a baby, Papa. A girl needs her mother with her!”
“Kaleev will be there, lovebug. And your Grandma. You can have Froggy’s mama too if you want! You’ll be drowning in mothers!”
“I want my mama!”
“And I don’t!”
“A problem, children?” Two-Edge spoke from his throne.
“Yes!” Smokewater roared.
“No, Great-grandpapa,” Ilsa replied sweetly. She turned a glare on Smokewater. “Mama is going to be here when this mump’s born! And you’re going to be pleasant to her!” A malicious smirk touched her full lips. “And if it’s a girl we’re calling her Ahn!”
“We are?” her diminutive consort asked.
“Yes, we are! And that’s that!” Ilsa said, punctuating her declaration with a toss of her red hair. “Now we’re all going to sit down and eat like a proper family!” She sank back into her chair, saw Smokewater wasn’t following suit, and boomed, “SIT!”
Grudgingly, Smokewater sat down. Up on the dais, Aroree looked concerned and Two-Edge looked mortified, while Shenshen and Brightmetal traded furtive smiles. At Mink’s own table, Gem let out a low whistle. “So Ahn Stonebreaker is coming home. Oh, this is going to be choice!”
* * *
“So what do you know about this Ahn?” Mink asked Wren as they undressed for bed.
“Well, I know when they call her Stonebreaker they aren’t talking about rocks and pickaxes.”
“I figured that.”
“Shortest of Smokewater’s lifematings. Started like skyfire – ended in banishment and a fight over who’d raise Ilsa. She went south with her followers, started up a holdfast under the desert, somewhere near the old ruins of Sorrow’s End. Sounds like she’s used to being queen of her own little kingdom.”
“Someone will need to keep her as far away from Smokewater as possible.”
“Are you volunteering?”
Mink shrugged. “I could do it – why not? I can only imagine the howls I’d pick up from her.”
“Always so curious,” Wren said fondly, as he sat down on the bed facing her. “And what about your plans for teaching the trolls archery?”
“Don’t you tease me too. I’m serious. The hunting they do now is fine for keeping Two-Edge’s family well-fed, but there are trolls down in the lower tunnels who’ve never had meat from the surface. Some good red meat is what they need – haven’t you noticed the surface-level trolls stand straighter than the ones in the deep pits? And they have less fat on them too, and… I can’t say, but I swear they’re just… quicker on their feet. You know, I’d wager that’s part of what turned the old forest trolls into misfits – they stopped going to the surface. The old howls say the trolls in the Frozen Mountains ‘changed’ – grew stronger, meaner, sharper-witted. What if it’s as simple as they eat more than just slugs and bats and toadstools? And get out in the sun more – we know constant sunlight changes elves – look at the dark skin and narrower shoulders the Sun Folk have! I wonder… what? Now you’re looking at me like that too!”
But he wasn’t, exactly. Where his brother had smirked at her with wry amusement, Wren was smiling up with something akin to wonder.
“I think I’m the luckiest elf in the world,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“Because…” he hesitated, lips parted, unable to put his thoughts into words. “Because I thought I’d forgotten how to live the Now of Wolf-thought. Because for too long, the Now has been a place I’ve never wanted to be. All those years you were slowly drifting away… the only way I got through each day was to remember how it was before – when we were both young and we had all the time in the world. And each day, that memory got a little fainter and fainter, until I couldn’t tell what was a memory and what was a dream.”
Mink swallowed the lump in her throat. Her heart ached as she thought of what he must have endured, out of respect for her choice. “Oh, lifemate…”
He smiled again. He took her hand, and again she felt that frisson of bloodsong, startling in its heat.
“And now… it’s like I’m meeting you for the first time all over again. Watching you find yourself again – it’s… it’s like a second Recognition.”
Mink blushed. Even after three millennia together, his ardent gaze made her feel oddly shy. “We had a second Recognition,” she pointed out in a small voice.
“You know what I mean. I can live in the Now again, because this moment is exactly where I want to be.”
She slipped her hand free of his grasp, just long enough to turn her wrist and interlace their fingers. He drew her closer, until she stood between his knees, and he bent his head to kiss her stomach. He whispered her soulmate against her skin and Mink felt her knees go weak.
With her free hand, she stroked his silver hair, until he raised his head to meet her gaze.
**Join with me tonight?** she asked.
She heard the little catch of breath as his moss-green eyes darkened with arousal. **Yes.**
* * *
Mink’s call for archers drew twenty-five curious volunteers. Of those, Mink eventually selected fifteen she thought showed promise. From the first day they practiced on the surface, no matter the weather. Five more dropped out as the novelty of freezing toes and aching shoulders wore off. The ten who remained gradually improved their distance and their aim. Soon Mink felt confident they could graduate to moving targets.
Ilsa’s baby was due in early spring. The snows were just beginning to melt when the infamous Ahn arrived at Blue Mountain.
She came in high style, accompanied by ten bodyguards, three handmaidens, and a squat little troll whose only duty seemed to be announcing her at every door. “Her Highness, the Archduchess of Sarazen!” he would bark, as the imposing troll matron swept into the room, gowned in severe black, her sharp blue eyes scanning every corner critically. Mink took one look at the archduchess and wondered what she had gotten herself into. But she soon found that Ahn was quite personable, as long as one made no effort to interrupt her frequent tirades against Smokewater. Ahn in turn seemed quite fascinated by Mink’s tales about her life in the Evertree, particularly her abrupt departure.
“So we were both ill-used by males in our lives,” Ahn declared. “And we’re both the better without them.”
Ilsa’s labor pangs began as the flowers began to bud in the meadows, and Mink discovered another great different between trolls and elves. While elf-mothers dropped their cubs as easily as wolves, trolls struggled as humans did. And while the birth of a new Wolfrider was a moment mother and father shared together, troll births were attended only by females.
“Wormwater!” Ilsa exclaimed when Mink asked whether her lifemate would not be a comfort at her side. “I’d rather be torn limb from limb than let him see me like this!”
“He ought to be torn limb from limb for doing this to you,” Ahn muttered.
Ilsa let out another low moan and rocked with the contraction. As the day went on, her pains grew sharper, and Mink grew alarmed at Ilsa’s increasingly anguished cries.
**Nothing’s wrong,** Shenshen insisted in a private sending. **It’s just how it happens for trolls. This is actually moving along much faster than usual – must be her elf-blood. Can you fetch me some more wackroot for her to chew? It will dull the pain.**
Mink ducked out of the birthing room, and came up against a wall of concerned male kin. Ilsa’s lifemate was first to demand an update. So short and so green that everyone knew him by the nickname Frog instead of his proper Glider name of Therek, he barely came up to Smokewater’s shoulder.
“How is she?” he pleaded. “Please – isn’t there anything I can do?”
Mink mumbled a negative and fought her way through the press of trollkin to reach Shenshen’s herb stores. But Therek’s voice must have carried, because a moment later, Ahn stuck her head out around the door and glared daggers at the hapless father-to-be.
“Anything you can do? Oh, how sweet! You might have thought of that before you put that mump inside her!”
“Aw, leave Froggy alone,” Smokewater said, throwing an arm over Therek’s shoulder in male solidarity. “It’s not his fault.”
“No, it’s yours! For giving our daughter those skinny hips! I see you’ve learned to brave the birthing court now – when I was striving to get our child you were off hunting, as I recall!”
“And if Ilsa hadn’t been such a sweet little mump I might never have come back!”
“You’d have had no complaints from me!”
Mink found the bundle of wackroot and rushed back to the door of the birthing room before violence could erupt. “You, chew this!” She thrust a root into Ahn’s hand. “You need the take the edge off more than your daughter does. And back inside before I put you on a leash.”
“You dare–”
“You’re poking right I do! I outrank you, remember? Now move!”
Like a wolf drawing back in alarm from a rabid squirrel, Ahn gathered her skirts and hastened back inside the birthing room. Mink passed the wackroot to Shenshen, who sliced off a piece and ordered Ilsa to chew. It wasn’t long before they were helping the laboring trollkin sit taller and bear down.
“A boy!” Shenshen hollered, loud enough for the males outside to hear. A resounding cheer went up beyond the door, while Ilsa sank back on the bed in exhaustion and Ahn narrowed her eyes critically.
“He looks awfully rosy for Frog’s tadpole.”
“Ahn, really,” Shenshen tutted as she cleaned the howling baby off. “See? He’s as pretty a gray as Ilsa herself. And look at that proud nose!” She passed the baby to the new mother, and Ilsa clasped him to her breast.
“A boy…” she slurred, still drowsy from the wackroot. Her lips sunk in a pout. “And I had five hundred wagered on a girl…”
“Thought of any names?” Mink asked.
“Therek… wanted to name a boy after his papa.”
“Varek?” Shenshen smiled. “A fine name for the newest Blood of Smiths.”
**That’s what? Nineteen great-grandchildren now?** Mink sent.
**Better get your archers out of the training yard and into the forest,** Shenshen sent back with a grin. ** This new mouth won’t be the last one by a long shot!**
The last pureblooded Wolfrider, wearing velvet and teaching her tribe’s ways to trolls. What would Strayshot and the others think of her now?
For the first time since she’d began to ask herself that question, Mink found she didn’t particularly care about the answer.
Elfquest copyright 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2015 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.