NINE
I GRABBED ERIC’S hand and turned to run—and something slammed into my back, knocking me face-first into the shallow water we’d been wading through, Eric splashing down beside me. The bag of weapons I’d been carrying went flying. Gasping, I rolled over, propped myself up on my elbows—and froze.
The wolf stood over us, water pouring from silver fur that shone in the moonlight, eyes as bright and red as coals in a fire. My heart beat a mad rhythm in my chest, as though trying to break out of its boney prison so it could make a dash for safety all on its own.
Another wet wolf ran up beside the first . . . and suddenly, neither was a wolf at all.
The change was nothing like what you see in movies, with long-drawn-out painful reshaping of bones and hair and muscles. It was more like the beasts were made of wax, wax that, in an instant, flowed out of wolf-shape and into human shape.
Naked human shape. A man and a woman, both muscled like Olympic sprinters, the woman pale in the moonlight, the man black as ebony. “This is one of the spies we were ordered to capture,” the woman said, pointing to me. “I recognize her smell.”
I looked from one to the other. Wait. What? Spies? Also, “capture”? “Yes, I’m the one you want,” I said, my voice quivering only a little . . . okay, quivering quite a lot. “I was coming to you voluntarily. Take me. Let the boy go.”
“Silence,” said the woman. “You are not the only one we seek.”
“My companion was taken by vampires—”
“You,” the woman said to Eric. “We are looking for a girl from our pack. Her name is Elena. Is she in the village?”
I tried to butt in. “We don’t know anyone named—”
“I said silence!” The woman’s eyes flashed hellfire red, and my throat closed on my words.
Eric said nothing. He was pressed against my left side. Like me, he had propped himself up to get his ears out of the water. I could feel him trembling.
I found my voice again. “You’ve terrified him. He’s too scared to speak.” And please, God, keep it that way.
“We know you send out patrols at dawn,” the woman said to Eric. “We last saw her on the other side of the rock face. We traced her trail partway down the path, then lost it. Was she captured? Do you have her?”
God was apparently not answering my prayers that night, or if He was, the answer was a resounding “no!” because “She’s dead,” Eric said.
My heart sank. Don’t say it, I thought desperately. Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it . . .
“I shot her,” he finished.
The woman gasped. The man shot her a glance. “Maigrat,” he said. “Don’t . . .”
He never finished his admonition. Maigrat screamed, a scream that became a howl as she shifted back into a wolf, and then she leaped. She slammed Eric back into the water-covered cobblestones with an enormous splash and, standing astride him with her forepaws on his shoulders, seized his throat in her jaws.
Somewhere on the wall, I heard a shout. Someone had heard her.
I tried to stand, but the man knelt and pushed me back into the water, and I could no more budge him than I could move a mountain. I waited for blood to spray, for Eric to die . . . or me . . . or both . . . but Maigrat, though her wolf-frame trembled, did not close her jaws. Instead, after a long moment, she released Eric’s throat, shifted her jaws to his forearm, and bit hard. He screamed. She backed away as, eyes wide, face pale in the moonlight, he stared at his arm. Blood soaked through the torn sleeve of his monastic robe.
Maigrat growled, deep in her throat, then shifted back into woman-shape and stepped back. The man holding me down followed suit. Eric and I both sat up, Eric clutching the wound in his arm. Blood welled between his fingers. “That is a change-bite,” Maigrat said.
“No!” Eric cried.
“Yes, boy. A change-bite. You slew one of our pack. Now you are one of our pack.”
Eric’s face had already looked pale in the moonlight. Now it turned positively ghostly. “Please, God, no!”
“Now you must make a choice,” Maigrat said. “Come with us, and live, or stay here, and die—slain by your people the way you slew Elena. Which will it be?”
Eric twisted his head toward me. Our eyes met. Then, quick as lightning, he scrambled up and ran as fast as he could toward the village square. Maigrat shifted back into wolf form, dark gray, with a white blaze running down her back, and ran after him.
“Is she going to kill him after all?” I asked my captor, who remained.
“No,” he said. “We will kill no one. We uphold the Pact.” He hauled me to my feet, gripped my arm painfully tight, and started pulling me after Maigrat and Eric.
“The Pact also forbids changing humans against their will!”
He growled, a very successful wolf sound for having come from a human throat. “Maigrat should not have done that. But the Pact is broken. And not by our doing.”
Not the way the humans tell it.
Suddenly, Maigrat was with us again, flowing up from wolf to human shape in an instant. “The brat fled behind the church. Into a cottage by the graveyard . . .”
“Father Thomas’ house,” I said, and then could have kicked myself.
“The priest,” Maigrat snarled. “It would be he who orders the slaying of our kind!” Back into wolf form, and away. We hurried after her on clumsy human feet, across the square, through the lych-gate.
I could still hear confused shouts on the wall. Presumably, the sentries were now staring into the village, looking for the source of the howl they had heard. Also presumably, there would be armed men in the streets very soon. They might rescue me. Or they might die trying.
Just scant weeks ago, I had never seen a violent death. Now they seemed to be following me around. I didn’t want any more on my conscience, but I also didn’t want to be rescued. Being captured by werewolves hadn’t been on my to-do list, but at the least, it would get me out of the village. And perhaps Queen Stephanie would turn out to be the Shaper, rather than Queen Patricia, in whose vampiric clutches Karl currently (presumably) resided. (Although that might be bad news for Karl.) I’d thought Patricia was more likely to be the Shaper because her vampires had captured Karl. But if the werewolves’ queen had sent out a patrol specifically looking for us, maybe she was the more likely one.
In my own world, I’d not made myself anyone important, instead opting to be an ordinary potter in an ordinary (if admittedly, in retrospect, suspiciously picturesque) Montana town. But as Karl never tired of pointing out, there was something odd about me. Robur, Shaper of the last world we had been in, had been explicit about his role, styling himself Master of the World. In most worlds, I’d be willing to bet, the Shaper would follow that pattern, and establish him or herself as a great power—perhaps the greatest.
There was Father Thomas’ cottage. He stood in the doorway, in a loosely belted robe, clearly just roused from his bed, a crossbow in his hand. Maigrat paced back and forth through the tombstones, growling. I could not see Eric—presumably he was inside the cottage.
Maigrat dared not rush the priest because of the crossbow with its silver-tipped quarrel. Father Thomas dared not shoot into the darkness for fear of missing her and having no time to reload before she was on him.
Stalemate, but one that could not last long. “To me!” Thomas shouted. “Guards! Werewolves in the churchyard!”
Were those answering shouts? I wasn’t sure. The distant cries came from the direction of the village gate and could have been nothing more than the guards organizing themselves to search the streets. Enclosed as the churchyard was, I found it hard to believe Thomas’ voice had carried much beyond its confines.
Still, sooner or later—probably sooner—the guards would be on us. I started to speak, then stopped. What could I tell Thomas that would change anything? If I told him Eric had been given a change-bite, that he was doomed to become a werewolf, would Thomas, though it tore him apart, turn and put that crossbow quarrel right through the boy’s heart? He might. And I had no other avenue of persuasion.
Things were abruptly taken out of my hands. From inside the cottage appeared a new wolf, slender, half-grown, pale-furred. He leaped upward, slamming into Father Thomas’ back, driving him to the ground. The crossbow skittered out of the priest’s hand. He desperately scrambled for it as the young wolf ran over him, and into the darkness—to Maigrat.
“Let’s go!” my captor said as he yanked me around and pulled me back in the direction from which we had come. I resisted just for a moment, looking back, afraid I would see Maigrat and Eric—because the new wolf had to be him—savaging Father Thomas, but in fact, they were both running toward me, and an instant later, past me.
I ran willingly then with my naked captor. We dashed through the village square. Torches shimmered off the walls of the buildings bordering the broad street from the gate, the guards having gotten their patrols in play at last.
Father Thomas shouted behind us, but we were already running around the corner onto Tailor Street, Maigrat and Eric, in wolf form, far ahead. We passed my dropped bag of weapons—no chance to pick it up. The wolves plunged into the water and disappeared. My captor suddenly became a wolf at my side, growling at me, eyes burning. No possibility of running back the other way, then.
I took a deep breath and plunged into the pool just as torchlight came around the corner from the square. I kicked to drive myself down. I couldn’t see a thing, but I was close to the wall. I felt its stones, found the opening of the old gate, forced myself through, burst upward into fresh air on the other side, and discovered I could stand, the water neck-deep.
Ahead of me, two dark shapes arrowed through the water, their wakes spreading behind them, glittering in the moonlight. The lake stretched an unknown distance, the far shore only a suggestion of blacker darkness.
My captor surfaced beside me, man-shaped once more. I turned to him. “I can’t swim all the way across the lake!” I protested.
“You don’t have to,” the man said. “Ride me.”
This took my mind in an unexpected direction for a moment. “What?”
“Ride me,” he said impatiently, and then flowed into wolf-shape. He turned his great head toward me, red eyes blazing. I grabbed two handfuls of black fur, holding on as he plunged ahead into the water with powerful strokes . . . well, a powerful dog paddle, I guess, but whatever you called it, he moved us across the lake with alacrity.
Shouts behind us, on the wall. Light. Could they see us? I heard a zipping sound, a splash. They were definitely shooting in our general direction, but the uncertain light must have defeated their aim, or else they were just firing wildly. Nothing struck me or my wolf-mount.
Now I was free to entertain other thoughts, the first of which was, Damn, this water is cold. I’ll never make it across the lake. But I did, while that powerful canine body beat the water beneath me, because there’s nothing like the threat of imminent drowning to keep your hands in a death grip in the fur of a werewolf’s back, no matter how numb your fingers become.
Then came other thoughts. Queen Stephanie must be the Shaper. She sent these wolves to capture us. She must have sensed the Portal opening . . .
No. She couldn’t have sent them. When the wolves attacked the vampires on the other side of the rock face, we’d only been in this world a little over a day. Her realm had to be at least a couple of days’ travel south.
A message, then, to a patrol already near. Carrier pigeon, maybe?
No, not a patrol, I corrected myself. A pack. An extended family. And Elena, the teenager, did something impulsive, got separated from the others, and was killed.
All because I had entered this world.
Once more, I wondered if it was to be my fate to bring death and destruction everywhere I went. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds . . .
At last we reached the far shore of the lake. My ride shrugged me off into the shallows, where I fell with an icy splash. I crawled out on my hands and knees and then hunched myself on the shore, knees clutched to my chest. The furry black wolf who had brought me across shook himself (dousing me in more icy water), turned into a naked black man, and stood over me, body shining in the moonlight. I quickly looked away, my head being at an unfortunate elevation, only to find myself surrounded by wolves—clearly, the rest of the pack. I couldn’t count them in the dark, but the way they circled me, eyes glowing red, did not inspire a feeling of welcome, unless it was the welcome a Christmas turkey feels when it’s brought to the table.
Were Maigrat and Eric among those circling wolves? I couldn’t tell.
I turned my gaze toward Zarozje. Fires now burned on the walls and I could see people moving along it, staring out at the lake. A few shouts carried across the water. We had clearly caused great consternation.
“Stay,” my guard said, which was pretty rich coming from someone who had been a glorified dog a minute before. I looked up at him again as he turned and strode away. I lost sight of him for a minute or two in the darkness, then he returned, clothed now in a loose robe, cinched at the waist, clearly designed to be discarded in a moment if need arose. His also wore sandals that looked like they could be easily kicked off.
The others took their cue from him, it seemed. All around me, naked people appeared, knelt, pulled robes from hidden packs, dressed. One wolf flowed into a woman-shape I recognized all too well: Maigrat. Beside her, a smaller, pale-furred wolf sat back on its haunches and howled at the moon. A few others remained in wolf-shape, as well. I still didn’t have a good sense of how many there were in total.
Someone handed Maigrat a robe. She donned it without hurry, while the young wolf continued howling. “Awooooooooo! Awooooooooo!”
“Eric?” I said. The wolf stopped howling, turned his head, and looked straight at me with glowing red eyes. Then he trotted over to me and pushed up against me, and I put my arms around him and hugged him tight.
“Get up,” the werewolf who had carried me across the lake said.
I released Eric and stood. “Is the change always so fast?” I said, looking down at the wolf pressed to my thigh, his head raised toward me.
“It happens within a few minutes of the change-bite,” the man said. “Something the priest clearly did not know.”
“I don’t think he knew Eric’s wound was a change-bite,” I said. “If he had . . .” I remembered Thomas standing in the doorway with his crossbow in hand and fell silent.
The man put a hand on the young wolf’s head. “Eric is one of our pack, now.”
“He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want it. You’ve made him into what he thinks is a monster.”
“He no longer thinks that way,” the man said. “The change is more than physical.”
I was shivering again. I wrapped my arms around myself. “So why is he still a wolf? Why hasn’t he changed back to human form?”
“The first change lasts until the next dawn. After that, he will be able to control it at will during the night, as we do.” He held something out to me, just a dark shape in the moonlight. “Take this.”
“What is it?” I said suspiciously.
He sighed. “A spare cloak.”
“Oh.” Feeling foolish, I accepted it, pulled it on over my wet clothes, and immediately felt warmer. “Thank you.”
“What is so special about you?” asked my ride. I had to stop thinking of him as that, but I had no name for him yet. “Why is the queen so eager to retrieve you? She sent a messenger bird, telling us to find you and bring you to her.”
Aha! I was right, I thought.
Maigrat appeared from behind him. “To speak more plainly, what makes you worth the death of my little sister?” she snarled, teeth flashing in the moonlight, and I discovered that the snarl of a werewolf is a threatening thing no matter what form the werewolf is in.
“I’m a stranger,” I said. “From outside the valley.”
“You lie!” Maigrat spat. “There have been no humans outside this valley since the Great Cataclysm.”
“Precisely why the queen wants to see me, I’d guess,” I said.
The woman stepped closer, very close, so close I could feel her breath on my face—she was at least four inches taller than me, and I’m not particularly short. “It is fortunate for you she does,” she snarled (“snarl” seemed to be her default tone and expression and attitude, at least toward me). “Should the queen decide, after speaking with you, that you are not as interesting as she thinks, I look forward to eating your entrails.”
Never having had to respond to such a comment before, I lacked a witty riposte. “Um . . . okay,” I said. I thought you follow the Pact and never kill humans? I wanted to add, but—probably wisely—didn’t.
“Enough, Maigrat,” said my erstwhile ride. Growled, really. Maigrat snarled again but stepped back.
I looked at the man. Alpha male? I remembered reading that the theory of there being an “alpha male” in wolf packs had been debunked, but maybe the news hadn’t made it to this world yet. “The humans will give chase at first light. We must mount and be away. And our new pack member must hunt—he will be starving.”
That made me give the newly minted Eric-wolf a second glance, a somewhat worried one. The red-eyed gaze he turned on me was not all that reassuring.
“Can you ride?” the “alpha male” said.
Something other than you? “Yes,” I said. “But I’m allergic to horses.”
“I do not know what that means.”
“It means I will sneeze a lot.”
“As long as you don’t fall off, you may sneeze your eyes out.”
Well, that’s an unpleasant image.
He turned away. “Let’s go.”
We left the lake behind and climbed a low hill. The horses of which he spoke were tethered on the other side. I was surprised they were willing to let werewolves ride them, and even more surprised by how unconcerned they seemed by the unchanged, giant, red-eyed wolves trotting around. A choice of the Shaper’s, no doubt: these weren’t real horses, they were Shaped horses, like the remarkable horses in some novels that might as well be bicycles, for all the notice the author took of their horsey reality. I was a bit surprised the werewolves intended to ride them wearing nothing but their loose robes—the chafing-and-bruising risk seemed rather high to me—but I guess they were used to it. Maybe they had calluses in unusual places.
Bare legs flashed on all sides as the pack mounted. Maigrat alone took off her robe and turned back into a wolf. She and Eric circled each other a couple of times, then loped away, the white blaze on Maigrat’s back and Eric’s pale-gray fur shining in the moonlight. Hunting, I thought, and hoped it was only animals they sought.
I hauled myself slowly and awkwardly aboard the mare I was offered. Once in the saddle, I promptly sneezed. The mare gave me a reproving look. I shrugged at her, sniffed, and sneezed again.
“Let’s move,” said Alpha.
Okay, that was enough of that. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Jakob,” he said, and then we rode into the darkness.
If I remembered the size of the valley correctly, the northern border of Queen Stephanie’s realm lay at least seventy-five miles to the south of us. We clearly would not make that in half a night’s ride.
I was right, but not just because of the distance involved: after about four (increasingly miserable, for me) hours, our journey was abruptly interrupted by attacking vampires.
If there was one old adage my journeys through Shaped worlds had so far proved, it was that it never rains but it pours.
Though the sun set, Karl continued to watch the courtyard. In the ghostly light of the ever-present, ever-full moon, he saw a dozen naked people emerge from somewhere below him and, in an instant, transform into the giant bat-like creatures he had seen—and been abducted by—the night before. They flew up and past him, so close he felt the wind of their passage. One glanced at him, its eyes twin sparks of blood-red light.
Karl stared after them, wondering where they were going, and what would happen when they got there.
The moon looked down blankly and blandly, giving no answers.