In vain she tried to free herself. In vain she tried to tell them how she must go after the wolves, to her baby. Her human speech had suffered. They took her noises for hysteria. When, the backlands of Lan being what they were, they did understand and believe her, it was too late. The wolves and the child were gone. Gone forever. She ran about the hills crying for them, to no avail. Washed clean of the wolf smell, her arms empty of love, Berinda wept in the village street and slept in it, refusing kindliness, bereft.
It was here that the man had found her. He was kinless and wifeless, and Zastis was near. The pretty aura of Karmiss was not all faded from Berinda. Something in her despair, besides, touched him. He wooed her in some way, maybe merely by caring particularly and only for her.
She went home with him, timid at first. But his goodness was not an act, not a fluke. Then the magic was achieved, the magic Kesarh had worked with her, better than Kesarh’s magic, for this child lived. Her arms were full again of love.
And here she was now, her bright eyes bathed with it, and laughter lines about her mouth.
“And when,” said the older girl, gazing up into Berinda’s face, “did you find me again?”
It was plainly a ritual question. The dark child believed she was the baby the wolves had taken, who had somehow sorcerously been reinserted and brought forth a second time.
When Berinda replied, it was sure that she thought so too.
“When my womb swelled, it was you.”
“But where had I been till then?”
“Riding the air,” Berinda said. And the children and Berinda laughed.
Something in the phrase arrested Rem, even through all the rest. The air-borne soul outlawed, waiting—like the ancient Dortharian belief that some souls returned at once, through the medium of their fleshly got unborn children, or the children of their kindred. Hence that insanity of the Storm Lords that not the eldest son, but the last son conceived before a King’s death, must be his heir. The foible which had granted Raldnor Am Anackire a right to the Koramvin throne.
The dark child looked over at Rem, infallibly guessing he had been an assenting party to the whole outrageous tale.
“In winter,” she said, “wolves come to the door and we feed them. From our hands. We’re not afraid. Nor they.”
He assented to that, too.
The world had given way. To feed wolves like poultry was a little thing.
“There’s someone in the field,” the elder boy said.
Berinda turned, unflurried, to look at the doorway.
Rem got up.
He went to the door and out, and saw a man sitting a zeeba, leading another, against the whole pane of violet hill sky, staining crimson in the east from star-rise.
“I’m glad I found you,” said Lur Raldnor. “We didn’t get the wolf, but there’s wolf-scent everywhere up here, the dog’s almost mad with it.” His face was like a stone.
“How long have you been looking for me?”
“Since I went back from the pool and no one could see you. The dog helped.”
“But this isn’t far from—” Rem hesitated.
“About two hours’ riding. We’ve been longer, circling, trying to get the dog to sort you out from wolf.”
“I didn’t realize I’d gone so far.”
“No.”
“Where are your father’s men?”
“Just up there. I think we should leave here now, if you can manage it. They’ve about had enough.”
“And so have you, I take it.”
Lur Raldnor went on looking down at him. He said flatly, “Whatever I did to offend you—”
“You didn’t do anything. Give me a moment, and I’ll be with you.”
The sour exchange had amused Rem in a way he recognized in himself, a shield up against all that had happened.
He felt empty. Even his awareness of the boy did not mean much now, just something else he must control.
He returned into the cot, perhaps to bid them farewell like any other passing traveler. But they had already dismissed him from their scheme of things. The girl child was playing with her mother’s hair, the other children, the baby, the man, slept.
Rem left them, mounted his zeeba, and rode up the slope with Yannul’s very polite and very angry son.
Everything was finished. As it had not, somehow, been finished in the surety of death, in the face of mythos somehow it was. The child might have lived. Now, still it might. But he had heard here of what they called wolf children. There had been similar prodigies rumored in Karmiss; everywhere, maybe. Orphans adopted by wolf-packs, reared like wolves, running with wolves.
And so, if she lived, that was what she was. More conceivably, superstitious hunters had come on her, rending sheep or orynx or men. Killed her. Long ago.
He could of course go on trying to find her. If he ever did, she would be a wolf.
Eight years of dead ends. And then this ultimate dead end.
It was finished.
They made a makeshift camp somewhere in the hills, slept a few hours, and went on. Beyond terse civilities, Lur Raldnor and he did not exchange a word. There was nothing to say. Rem’s quest had been private and stayed private in its solution.
When the villa-farm emerged at the edge of the dawn, he realized what came next. It was the only step which was clear in the aftermath.
“They may be concerned,” he said to Raldnor. “They probably looked for us last night.”
“Probably.”
“My fault. I’m sorry. I’ll speak to your father.”
“Don’t you think I can speak to him myself?” said Lur Raldnor, and for the first time his tone and his look cut like a razor.
Rem shrugged.
“If you prefer.”
“He can’t learn any more from me,” he said later to Yannul. “You’d already taught him enough to pass very well. Otherwise, he’s got presence and a good head. If Raldanash gives him a command, which I take it is what you’re predicting, he’ll handle it. Better than most.”
“And you abruptly found this out during your nonexistent wolf hunt?” said Yannul, bringing him a cup of wine Rem thanked him for, set down and ignored.
“You’ve paid me generously. Don’t throw your money away when you don’t need to. He can work out with the young servant—I forget his name.”
“You’ve taken against my son,” said Yannul. He seemed quite serious, unhurried.
Rem said nothing, fretting for the door.
“I’m concerned,” said Yannul, not looking concerned. “I thought we’d brought him up to be a credit.”
“Sir,” said Rem, “He’ll shine for you in Dorthar like a torch. But I’ve my own dealings in Amlan—”
“I trust you,” said Yannul. “Why don’t you trust yourself?”
Rem stopped dead. Everything stopped.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. He stared Yannul out and was stared out in return.
“Is it,” said Yannul, “that you think he won’t be able, well-mannered lad that he is, to say ‘No’ loudly enough? He would say no, Rem. There’s no Ommos blood in my son.”
Rem felt the lash of that as if the man had struck him.
The land of Ommos, narrow of scope and heart, cruel predator while able upon the Lowlands, had a name now worse than offal. And at the same time that name of Ommos, whose cult was the sexual union of male with male, had become synonymous with the proclivities of men like himself. Logically, illogically. The Lowlanders had hated Ommos. Yannul would hate it. To Yannul it was perversity and filth. All of it, and everything about it.
“I speak my mind,” said Yannul. “But think. You’ve been in my house some while. With my son. And I knew inside a day.”