Chapter 5

Wolves Bare Their Fangs

— Part the First —

The grey dawn slowly flushed crimson. Fresh, feeble rays of the rising sun began to fall upon Aéna’s cloaked shoulders and the sleek back of Haar. The shadow of the wolf stretched across the frost-browned grasses of the steppe, racing alongside them as they ran.

Spurred by the firm press of Aéna’s knees, Haar quickened his pace, darting like a thunderbolt across the gnomish meadows. The girl bared her teeth in a wild grin. Her hood slipped from her head, and her hair gleamed like spun gold, while frost crystals on her flushed cheeks glittered like icy stars.

“Faster! Faster!” she whispered fervently into the wolf’s furry ear.

At last, they dashed into an alder grove nestled ‘mongst rocks, small as grains of sand beneath the feet of a mighty dragon when compared to the towering peaks beyond. Haar slowed, his powerful gait easing into a lope. Aéna slid from his silver-furred back to the frost-bound earth, graceful as a falling leaf. The wolf bolted ahead, his shape eftsoons swallowed by the pale-grey boulders, vanishing from the gnome-girl’s sight.

Heél lay sprawled upon one of the stones, hands tucked behind his head, fingers tangled in the wild thicket of his dark auburn hair. Catching sight of him from afar, Aéna darted between the alders and clambered up the rocks. Without a word, she curled herself against his side, nestling as one might into a mossy bed warmed by the sun.

Without opening his squinted eyes wider, Heél smiled faintly.

“Where were you last night?”

“Haar finally took me to his pack,” Aéna declared, her wide, triumphant grin disappearing into the folds of his cloak. “He trusted me as he would Vélho.”

Heél lifted one brow slightly and turned his head toward her.

“And you went alone, without Vélho?”

“So what if I did!” she huffed, sitting up so she could see his face. “Let anyone try to lay a hand on me!”

She drew a dagger and sliced patterns through the air, swift and sure as a swallow tracing figure-eights above a clearing. The blade halted just a whisper from Heél’s throat.

“I’d thrash them so soundly they’d weep for daring to bare a fang at me!”

“I don’t like it when you do that,” Heél said, laying his head back on his hands and fixing his gaze on the cloudless morning sky. “It’s not a thing to jest about — or play at.”

“Ah yes, Heél the philosopher, always mourning every stray blade of grass,” she retorted with a teasing smile. Yet her expression soon softened. She gazed awhile at his pale, freckled face with a greedy wonder, like a treasure-seeker savouring the gleam of a newfound gem.

How can I love someone so different from myself? she wondered. Her heart quickened with joyful bewilderment, which swept over her again without warning. Where does this come from, stirring within me?

She brought her face, round as a full moon, close to his and began planting soft kisses upon his nose and cheek.

“I love you,” she murmured, nestling into the crook of the elf-boy's neck. Heél withdrew his hand from beneath his head and tangled his fingers in her hair.

“I saw the Moon-Daughters last night,” he said after a pause, his voice drifting like a dream. “They were clad in gowns woven from the shimmering veils of the Misty Wanderer.”

He began to toy with a lock of her hair as though it were a mischievous thread unravelled from a cloak’s seam. Yet there was something distant about his touch, as if his fingers wandered realms far from this world.

Aéna shot upright in an instant.

“What?” she snapped, bristling.

“What’s this now? Jealous of a vision lingering in my mind?” Heél laughed soundlessly. “Ah, Aéna, Aéna!”

She opened her mouth to retort, but her words were drowned by Haar’s sudden howl, echoing from the peaks above — a wailing, fierce cry, sharp as a blade slicing through the morning air.

“Vélho.” Heél rose to his feet, frowning as he cast a glance toward her. “What could he want so suddenly?”

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“May Likho have blown him here!” she huffed, clearly vexed at the interruption of their unfinished conversation.

Let those Moon-Daughters sit in his head no longer, at least for now, she thought with defiant satisfaction, though.

“Come on!” Heél urged, placing a steadying hand upon her back and gently nudging her forward. The girl calmed entirely. The touch of Heél, now wholly absorbed by matters of the Pack, his dark-green eyes alight with flickering black embers, felt far more real and enduring than the dreamer who spoke grandly of mysteries beyond her understanding.

For at times, it seemed to Aéna that there were two Heéls, utterly different from one another. The thought was foolish, strange, and vexing.

They were already climbing whenas the eastern wind tore through the thick wool of her hood, brushing her cheeks with icy fingers. She winced slightly but, with both hands clinging to the rocks, could not reach up to pull the hood tighter around her face.

Glancing upward, she saw Heél a yard above her, his hands and feet moving swiftly like a spider scaling stone, steadily ascending toward the summit where Vélho awaited. Aéna was nimble and swift, yet she could never keep pace with him whilst climbing.

Whence did such agility come in this dreamer, always with his nose buried in poetry and the musings of sages philosophers?

Yet then — he was an elf, though she sometimes forgot it. Climbing flowed through his very blood.

She lowered her head with a determined motion, her cheek nearly grazing the sharp curve of the rock. Don’t you dare look down, she thought, hastening her movements.

They were nearing their destination when, all at once, the rocks trembled like aspen leaves caught in a tempest. Yet it was no ordinary wind that caused them to quiver. Instinctively, Aéna pressed herself tighter against the stone face, her blood momentarily draining from tense fingers that dug into the limestone ridges with the strength of driven nails.

The air thrummed, drowning out Heél’s shout.

“Hold fast!” she barely caught through the clamour.

A shadow swept over them, darkening the pale grey of the limestone as though night had fallen in an instant, moonless and grim. Aéna tore her gaze from the stone before her nose and glanced cautiously behind. A wing, vast as an oak, beat the air beside her, crimson as dried blood.

I’ll fall. Her heart raced, yet she did not shut her eyes. Barely blinking, she watched as the colossal dragon beast soared between the mountain clefts, bearing in its maw a young alder tree.

She had never seen its like therebefore.

Glancing upwards, she spied Heél frozen in place, his form motionless save for the faint fluttering of his cloak, still caught in the dragon’s fading wind.

“Still breathing?” she called, hauling herself up beside him, clinging to the rock face. “What was that Likho ?”

“Of the blood of the dragonmages,” he murmured in wonder, his gaze fixed upon the distant horizon where the creature had vanished. “ And I — who shall one day master dragons in the name of the Alder Lady. ”

They lingered there awhile till Aéna lost patience.

“Move on!” she snapped. “The beast’ll be back any moment, probably lining its nest with those blasted alders.”

Tearing her gaze from Heél, she resumed her ascent up the rock face.

Near the summit, the rocks grew more rugged, their folds forming paths of a sort, making the climb easier. Aéna led the way now, slowing her pace just enough to wait for the dawdling elven boy, lost once again in his queer thoughts. Her gaze, indifferent but restless, flicked upward along the trail carved into the rocky ridges. These outcroppings at the mountain's feet were sometimes called the Fiery Gate of Gor Laran, for by nightfall, flames would spring forth unbidden from the limestone folds, summoned by dragon art. But now, freshly kissed by dawn, only ice crystals glittered upon the stone.

Only when Heél was directly behind her did Aéna press on, climbing swiftly until they crested the summit — the place where Vélho dwelt and where, in Haar's voice, he summoned his company to council. Thin alder shoots, gnarled and half-formed between shrubs and twisted thickets, grew among the frost-silvered stones. A weak but biting wind tugged at their bare branches.

Emerging from the naked alders, as though for a true gathering of a wolfish pack, the band members appeared. Fourteen there were in all, though Aéna counted only half approaching the meeting. The rest roamed alone or in pairs, too far from the outcrop to heed Vélho’s call, dispatched on errands of their own.

The girl drew nearer to the gathering, her gaze drifting slowly over the figures assembled there. All at once, it halted, fixing sharply upon a fragment of a face peeking out from behind Osgod's ruddy head — a face handsome as that of a sylph prince, with an eye grey-blue as the tempered steel of a dagger, where the heavens themselves might find their reflection.

Sag! thought Aéna in astonishment. She glanced over her shoulder at Heél, who met her eyes ere furrowing his brow at the sight of Sago. So he’s escaped from the dungeons of Grod Gérlod! Always cunning enough to wriggle free...

Curiosity gnawed at her, yet she did not approach the gnome, and neither did Heél. Sag, second only to Vélho in the Pack and vain in his unmasked wickedness, still nursed a grudge, holding them as worthless brats unfit for the band since that single instance, years ago, when they had dared defy him. Aéna harboured a flicker of fear toward him and preferred not to cross his path without good cause. Only Master Beech himself knew what Sag might still be willing to do to her and Heél, were it not for Vélho’s protection.

She shifted her gaze leftward, to a woman clad in a long black coat, her hair a grimy gold like a serpent of tarnished copper. The woman raised her hand then to silence the gathering. Jara. Aéna had admired her for as long as she could remember for being “unwifed” to Vélho. For though all reckoned her his wife, she was not in truth, least of all in the eyes of the chief himself.

That chief now sat unmoving upon an alder shrub. A thin branch drooped before his face, slicing it in two between his long, inscrutable eyes, like a lightning bolt etched in wood. Though not old, his hair was entirely silver, save for a few strands the hue of grey-green steppe grass shoots. In nearly every way, Vélho resembled Haar, who crouched stiffly at his feet, mirroring his master's rigid bearing. They would oft say that Vélho and Haar were one, able to share thoughts and even transform into one another. At times, Aéna doubted the truth of it, yet now and then, it seemed plausible — though never had she witnessed such a change with her own eyes.

At Jara’s signal, the murmured conversations dwindled to silence. Vélho leapt soundlessly from the branch, landing beside Haar's feet to begin the council. His pale-grey face, as ever, struggled to convey any discernible emotion, yet Aéna thought she detected an unusual glint of satisfaction lurking there.