“My aura?”
“Yes.” Jerem stroked his wispy beard. “His kind has a unique ability to see essences around any living thing without engaging their Matersense.”
“What is his kind? And what is he called? His name? I’d like to know what or who I’m facing.”
“Knowing that part would make no difference. He’s had too many names to count. What he calls himself now,” he shrugged, “I have no idea. Suffice it to say, if he doesn’t wish to accompany you then you will not be able to force him.”
“So how am I to bring him back with me?” she asked.
“That, dear one, is a problem for which you must find a solution. One thing is certain. You must not fail,” High Ashishin Jerem said, his raspy voice harder and more grave than she had ever heard.
A quick movement from Silvereyes broke Irmina from her memories. He darted away toward Carnas.
Irmina’s stomach writhed. She didn’t wish to follow, but what other choices were there? If she needed this to complete her training, to secure her revenge, then so be it. Hand on her sword hilt, she jogged after Silvereyes.
Ancel stumbled through the side door of his parents’ winery with Mirza and Charra on his heels. “Da! Ma!” He rushed down the hall past hanging paintings and startled servants toward the study. He banged the door open.
Ancel’s father looked up from poring over his books, his black hair streaked with white spilling about his face. Stefan’s expression darkened as he straightened in his chair. “What’s all this fuss about? Shouldn’t you two be out picking kinai?”
Ancel and Mirza’s words tumbled over each other at the same time, their recount of the night’s events spilling out in a jumble.
His father’s hard slap rang off the tabletop. “One at a time.”
“Stefan, sir,” Mirza began, wringing his hands.
Stefan stroked his pointed beard and arched an eyebrow at him.
“S-sorry,” Mirza stammered, his cheeks flushing red, “I mean, Master Dorn. Sir, we were just chased by…by…”
“Spit it out, boy.”
The heavy oak door creaked open. Ancel’s mother peeked in, her gray hair wrapped in a bun. Her steady, silvery blue eyes took in both their disheveled appearances before she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “Why do you two look as if you were dragged through a field? And what’s this mess you brought in with you?” She pointed at the red trail their boots and Charra’s paws left on the carpet. Her nose wrinkled “And what’s that awful smell?” She leaned back outside the door and called for one of the servants, barking instructions before turning her gaze back to the boys. “Well?”
Their replies burst forth again, a jumbled roll of both voices at once.
“Both of you calm down,” his mother ordered, her voice a melodic chime that still carried authority. “Take a seat.” She pointed to the soft, cushioned armchairs as she glided across the room. Her dark blue dress brought out her eyes as it flowed around her. “Give yourselves a few moments to breathe and then begin again. From the start this time.” She nodded to Stefan and then to the large room’s opposite side.
Stefan pushed back his chair from the table and stood. His white silk shirt and biege trousers showed stains from his last meal. Muttering under his breath, he strode past the many bookcases to the second entrance into the room, peered outside, then pulled the door shut.
Ancel and Mirza made their way to the chairs near the table and sat. Books littered the oak surface, many of them open or containing a marker. Charra trotted over and stretched on the rug next to them.
The thick rug under his feet soothed Ancel as he suddenly realized that his legs were watery weak. Taking a deep breath, he stretched them out, savoring the smell of old books and the flowery scented oil his mother favored in the lamps along the walls. This was the only room in the house without a window, and the lamplight played across the wall hangings depicting the history of the Ostanian tribes. Considering how his father often boasted about their ancestors’ bravery, Ancel wondered what they would have thought about how he fled the Greenleaf.
“Well, which one of you is ready?” His father once again took his seat at the table. Mother stood next to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“I am,” Ancel answered. He sucked in a great breath and relayed all that had happened, from the missing wolves to the rotten kinai in their secret glen, to the two wolf-like creatures that had followed them.
His father’s brow rose and lowered with the telling until his eyes became slits when Ancel mentioned the two beasts. His mother’s face remained impassive until he mentioned the kinai. A slight hiss escaped her lips then.
“Have you told this to anyone?” Stefan’s stern expression took in both Mirza and Ancel.
“No, Da.”
“No, Master Dorn.”
“Good. Keep it that way until I say otherwise.” A thoughtful look crossed his father’s face.
“I know that look, Stefan Dorn,” Mother said. “Don’t think of running off and doing anything foolish.”
“I’m not, Thania, dear, but this needs to be investigated.”
“Tell the Council. Let them have this task for once.”
His father sighed. “I wish it were that simple.”
“It’s always simple,” Mother said dryly. “Some clans have come down from the mountains with wild mountain wolves to use in one of their feuds. As usual you decide it’s your matter to settle.” She shook her head and huffed.
Stefan appeared taken aback, and his eyebrows climbed his forehead as he turned his head up to gaze at her. “You know better,” he said, his voice somewhere between scolding and a quiet reminder. “If it were only ruined kinai I would pass this over, but the smell he described and the green eyes…” His voice trailed off as Mother rolled her eyes. Stefan glanced around at Mirza and Ancel.
“As if they could cross the Vallum of Light,” his mother retorted under her breath. In a more even-tempered voice she said, “Take some extra men with you if you must be the one, but only a soldier or two. There’s no need to scare the boys any more than they already are. We wouldn’t want their imagination to get the better of them.” She eyed them as if waiting for either of them to say something different, but they both remained quiet.
“You’re right as usual.” Stefan bowed apologetically. “I let the old days come creeping through when I heard their story.” He gave a strained chuckle. “I’ll see which mountain clans are fighting and inform the Council. You boys…”
The rest of his father’s words washed over Ancel in a disquieting wave. He answered Mirza’s raised brow with a bewildered expression of his own. Ancel mulled over the descriptions in his head; wolf-like beasts with green, glowing eyes, a smell like old, unwashed fur mixed with death. Coupled with his mother’s mention of the Vallum of Light it clicked like a key in a lock.
Wraithwolves? No it couldn’t be. They couldn’t cross the Vallum of Light and its Bastions. Besides, in the books, shadelings often walked like men. What he and Mirza saw did not. So what were they? He turned to Mirza to see the same realization dawn on his friend’s face.
“Da,” Ancel broke in on whatever his father was saying. “Do you really think those were wraith-”
“I never said such a thing,” his father snapped, his voice hardening into steel. “And don’t you repeat that in front of anyone. Rumors are the last thing we need. Do.You.Understand?” He punctuated his words by pointing his finger from Ancel to Mirza.
Ancel recognized this as a time that he wouldn’t get around his father, and that the instructions weren’t negotiable. He nodded, seeing Mirza’s head bob slowly beside him.