“You’d never make it out of camp alive.”
Andri shrugged. “I’ll take that risk. Now, talk.”
The dwarf took his cue well, easing the point of his blade into the soft flesh of Ostra’s neck until a bright drop of blood appeared beneath his blade.
“All right. All right! I didn’t lie to you about Kelso-Skunk-and Kira. That really did happen. But it was at least twenty years ago, and no one has seen any sign of Skunk since he was driven from the camp. Some people believe he’s living wild in the Burnt Wood, but there have never been any reliable sightings. I’d heard about the white fur Irulan found from Javi when I went to visit him, and I figured it would be easy enough to make you think Skunk was the source of that fur. So I concocted the tale of travelers having seen a white-streaked shifter by Cairn Hill to lure you away, to buy us some time. Thorn’s trap was supposed to keep you there for a few days, but I see it wasn’t successful. Where is he? What have you done with him?”
Irulan looked too shocked by the mention of her brother to speak, so Andri answered.
“Thorn is dead,” he said, making no attempt to cushion his angry words. Thorn’s death could have been avoided if the camp leader had simply told the truth from the beginning. Another life lost unnecessarily in the pursuit of this killer. “What you didn’t realize when you made up your little tale of a vengeful shifter is that there was something evil haunting those cairns, just not something living. A wight, who killed and turned Thorn before we even got there. We were lucky to make it out alive.”
Ostra’s face blanched.
“Thorn is … dead?” He sagged against the floor and all the fight drained out of him. “He was my sister-son. I raised him from a youngling when she died. He would have been leader after me.” The old shifter closed his eyes against tears, which spilled out onto his cheeks to form tiny puddles of mud on the dirt floor.
Andri motioned to Irulan and Greddark to let the shifter leader up. He did not think the old shifter would lie this time. His grief was too strong to be feigned.
Ostra sat up, knuckling his eyes, a curiously childlike gesture. But when he looked up at Andri, there was nothing childish about his mute sorrow. He was just an old, tired shifter who had lost one too many loved ones.
“You said you were trying to buy time,” Andri prodded him gently. “For what? Or who?”
“Old Quillion. He’s a werewolf, laired up in the ruins of Shadukar, half-crazy from age and the things they did to him during the Purge. When the murders first started happening, we feared he might be to blame, especially since so many of them occurred on nights when several moons were full.”
Andri dropped into the nearest chair, stunned. There had been nothing about full moons in the files he’d gotten from the Bishop. Had Maellas even known? And even though Andri had himself worried a lycanthrope might be to blame, he hadn’t tried to track down an orrery to correlate the dates of the murders. Granted, he’d only been in Aruldusk for a few days and orreries weren’t that easy to come by, even with access to a Cardinal’s coffers, but he should have looked into it after questioning Irvallo. But he thought he would have more time and, if he were honest with himself, he hadn’t really wanted to know. He’d allowed his own personal fears to get in the way of the task the Keeper had given him. By the Flame, he’d been a fool!
Ostra continued, oblivious to Andri’s silent self-recrimination.
“We tried to hunt him down, even got close to snaring him once, but he vanished before my trackers could spring their trap. It was then that we realized he had some sort of teleportation device-a ring, we think-which of course made tracking him next to impossible. But even if he hadn’t had such a powerful item, Quillion lived in Shadukar for years before it was razed. We weren’t going to find him unless he wanted to be found. So we watched, and waited, and prayed that we were wrong. And then you showed up-Andri Aeyliros, son of the famous Alestair Aeyliros, Scourge of the Moontouched. Why else would the Keeper send you if she did not suspect a lycanthrope? So I sent you south, and runners north, to try one last time to find Quillion and determine his guilt or innocence before the Silver Flame got hold of him.”
“If you think he’s guilty, why in the name of the Flame are you trying to protect him?” Irulan asked, her disgust and outrage evident. “It’s only a matter of time before Maellas starts executing the shifters he’s imprisoned, and even less than that before the people of Aruldusk start lynching us in the streets! Is the life of some insane werewolf worth even one shifter’s death?”
Ostra looked at her sadly. “I know your clan has never believed that being descended from lycanthropes is a gift, Irulan, but they are our ancestors, and deserve our reverence. And aside from honoring our beginnings, we know what the Inquisitors did to him. Their brutality was unconscionable. Unspeakable. It was a miracle of the Host that Quillion survived at all, let alone escaped. If it hadn’t been for the Path of the Howl, he wouldn’t have. So even if he was responsible for the murders, there was no way we were going to put him through that again. A nice, clean death with a silver-tipped arrow through the heart. We owe him that much.”
“The Path of the Howl?” Greddark asked from his place by the tent flap, where he was watching for the rescue attempt they all knew would be coming-they hadn’t exactly snuck in to Ostra’s tent, after all, nor had the camp leader been particularly quiet in his protestations of innocence.
“It’s a network of safehouses, tunnels, and hidden paths that crisscross each of the Five Nations,” Andri explained. He had heard of its existence from his father, who had actually helped to fill in one such tunnel beneath Thalingard-thankfully, long before the pyromancer had cause to try and use such an escape route himself. “It was used to transport lycanthropes and shifters beyond the reach of the Church during the Purge. Now I suppose, if it’s used at all, it’s the province of smugglers and other criminals.”
“Well, I hate to break up this little history lesson,” Greddark said, drawing his sword, “but they’re here.”
Andri rose from his seat.
“How many?”
“Ten that I can see, so that probably means twenty. Longbows, a few crossbows. The ones circling around the back will have blades.”
“I’ll deal with them,” Irulan said, drawing her own sword and disappearing into the interior of the tent.
Ostra heaved himself up from the dirt floor. “Let me go out and talk to them. Once they see I’m safe, they’ll back off.”
Andri didn’t particularly want to let the duplicitous shifter out of his sight, but he didn’t have a ranged weapon, and Irulan had left her bow, unstrung, strapped to their horse’s saddle. As if reading his mind, Greddark pulled a wand out of his multi-pocketed coat.
“Go ahead. But I’m going to have this wand trained at your back the entire time. One false move and you’ll find your guts blasted all over the campfires. And I don’t think you want roasted innards to be that last thing you smell before you die, especially when they’re yours.”
Ostra sighed. Defeat hung about him like a miasma.
“There’s no need for threats. If I wanted you dead, I would have impaled myself on your blade and let the tribe do the rest.”
He squared his shoulders and raised his chin. Greddark stood aside to let him pass, keeping the wand’s crystalline tip pointed at the shifter the whole time.
The shifter leader exited the tent, both hands raised in a calming gesture. Greddark kept him covered from behind the dubious safety of the tent flap.
“Peace, my children. I am unharmed. There is no need for weapons or violence. Go back to your tents.”
“We saw the furless storm into your tent!” a shifter shouted. “We heard you yell!”
Furless. Andri hadn’t heard that particular insult before.