Passage Point
“Push, Mardu,” Rask commanded.
“I’ve done this before,” Mardu growled under her breath.
She crouched on the furs, while Vok braced her shoulders and Rask knelt at her side, ready to aid when the baby came. Teir continued to play a light tune on his wind-whistle. His fingers were not as skillful as Vok’s and he missed several notes.
“Nnnh... give me a moment...” she moaned. “Ahh...”
One last contraction, and the baby slipped into Rask’s waiting hands. Mardu leaned back against Vok’s chest, laughing softly. In her centuries of childbearing she had come to know the signs of a fawn who would not survive, and the fawn who would. The little boy lying on the fur, squalling and kicking his fat feet in the air, had all the signs of a survivor.
“We did it,” she breathed. Vok wound his arms about her shoulders, holding her tight.
“We did it, K’Chaiya,” he whispered. “Who says the young come through us but don’t belong to us? This one’s does. This little buck’s ours, and we’re not letting him go.” He stared down at the newborn in wonder, as if the child was his firstborn.
Kahvi crept into the hut of driftwood and rocks. Mardu was sitting up, nursing the newborn. “Chieftess, come see your newest tribemate,” Mardu invited cheerfully.
Kahvi looked down at the head dusted with brown-black hair. “He looks strong. His name?”
“Manx,” Vok said.
“Manx,” Kahvi chuckled. “A new name for a new world, eh?”
“Kahvi,” Mardu said gently. “A lot has happened the last two years. Can the war not end now?”
Kahvi sat down next to her old friend. “The war is over. The damage is done.”
“You’re still our chieftess.”
Kahvi snorted. “To some. But I see more and more look to you for guidance. Teir turned down the chief’s braids soon enough – I knew he didn’t have the stomach for it. But you... maybe I should try braiding that rat’s nest of yours.”
Vok possessively fluffed Mardu’s honey-brown hair. Resentment rose in Kahvi’s throat. “I suppose you two are lifemates now,” she growled.
Mardu and Vok exchanged glances. They said nothing, one way or the other.
“Kahvi, life is good here,” Mardu said. “Three more fawns should be dropping in the next moon. We’re rebuilding our numbers. Can’t you be happy?”
“We’ve lost something, Mardu. Call it pride. Call it guts. We’re broken.”
“Because we were unwilling to fight in your war?”
“No, it’s more than that. We have no purpose. Ever since we won the Palace...” Kahvi sighed. “All long as the Palace called to us, we had something to fight for, something to reach for. And when we won it we knew we’d have to fight to keep it. That was our new purpose. Now... ol’ blackhair has taken the Palace well beyond the reach of any enemies. And we have a piece of the Palace that we can carry around with us whenever we wander. So what do we have to reach for now?”
“A better life for our fawns,” Mardu said. “A life without famine, without war. Isn’t that enough?”
“We’ve lost something,” Kahvi repeated. “We’ve been losing it since the end of the Palace War. And I can’t be happy until I find out how to get it back.”
“She won’t be turned from her sorrow,” Mardu said. She and Teir stood outside their hut, watching Kahvi pace along the gravel beach. It had been a crusting since they had found the great sea – what the Wolfriders called the Vastdeep Water – where the Valley of Ice met the crashing waves. Teir had named their first camp along the seashore the Thunder Cliffs after the great noise the glacier made as it calved great slabs of ice into the water. But Thunder Cliffs was too barren, with insufficient bare land in which to hunt. To the south lay more ice and water. To the north-west, they could just see a great forested mountain beckoning them across a great bay.
So they had continued north, hugging the coastline. For another month they picked their way across glaciers and great heaps of moraine. They passed into a dark land of endless barren rock. And then they turned south with the coastline to reach the mountain. Here the woods were thinner than those at the old lodge, and the game sparser. But the plains and cliffs at the sea’s edge were full of life, and here the Go-Backs at last found a safe haven. Hemmed in by ice on all sides, they hunted, gathered and fished in a pocket of abundant life. As Mardu was the only Go-Back with clear memories of their days on the seaside, centuries before, she naturally assumed leadership. She directed the children and lifebearers to dig for shellfish in the cold sand and look for spiny creatures in tidal pools. She helped the adventurous build crude rafts and boats to reach the shallow banks where crabs and fish could be trapped. And she suggested ways to hunt the multitude of seabirds that nested in the cliffs.
Kahvi resented it. She resented her own bewilderment in a strange environment. She resented the peace they had found, a peace that rendered warriors obsolete.
“The tribe is thriving. Isn’t that enough for her?”
“She is battling her own frail memories, Teir,” Mardu said. “She remembers we once lived like this – without war, without a need to ‘go-back’ – but she can’t remember how she found joy in it. She says we’ve lost something. But I think she’s lost something... and she doesn’t know how to find it.”
“She almost froze when she took that tumble in the water. And she had no business being up on the nesting cliffs without help.”
“She wants to prove she is still chieftess, Teir. It’s all she’s ever known.”
“She’s trying to kill herself.”
“Perhaps.”
“Someone needs to take that cursed Palacestone away from her. And Chot. He’s nothing but trouble, urging her on.”
“He’s better than Zey.”
“She’d do better to take to Krim. She hasn’t the wits of a snowbear, but at least her love is genuine.”
“Too genuine, perhaps. Kahvi distrusts love she does not feel she’s earned.”
Manx began to fuss in his little sling, and Mardu unlaced her parka, allowing him to nurse. Teir turned to the south. The point where they camped was bare of ice, but behind them on the western flank of the mountain another great wall of ice crept down onto and over the sea.
“I wonder...” Teir mused.
“Mm?”
“That great ice bridge that covers the water. How far south does it reach? Is it a real bridge... does it connect to more land? The New Land, perhaps?”
Mardu smiled. “An ice bridge to the New Land. What dreams you have, Teir.”
Kahvi watched her tribe at work. Her tribe – it was hardly hers anymore. Mardu directed the fishing, the gathering, even the hunting of the sea creatures. Kahvi still led hunts into the forests for deer and snowbear, but there was precious little large game. No, it seemed the sea was now their provider.
Kahvi distrusted change. Everything had worked well when they were warriors fighting for the Palace. Elves died. Elves were born. The call of the Palace urged them on when they were tired, rewarded them for their strength. There was a purpose to life, something greater than the day-to-day struggles. Now it seemed enough to simply survive.
If the trolls or those ancient things called humans arrived here on the point, would they fight to defend their land? Or would they flee again? Would they become senseless wanderers, without home, without purpose?
Wanderers. Kahvi shivered. They had called themselves the Wanderers, before the Palace called them to greater things.
Exiles.
I want more! Kahvi screamed in her head.
She stalked back to camp. Along the rocky beach, high above the tide lines, were a dozen huts made of driftwood, rocks and frozen mud. Was this what the Sun Village looked like? Kahvi wondered. The thought chilled her. She had listened with many others to Rayek’s stories about his “dirt-digger” kin and the stagnation in which they lived their lives.
She threw back the driftwood door to her hut and bent her head to enter. She expected to find the Palacestone sitting in its carved holder next to her littlehearth. But it was gone. So was Chot, whom she had left sleeping in her bed a few hours before.
“Troll pokin’–” she growled, taking up her spear.
She found Chot in the forest, sitting on a bare patch of frozen earth. Melting time was coming to the mountain and the point, and the snow was slowly receeding to reveal cold ground and the first short-blooming plants. A meltwater spring babbled in the distance.
“Chot!” Kahvi shouted.
Chot was bent over the Palacestone, his eyes closed, his face screwed up in an expression of pain.
“Chot!” Kahvi seized him and yanked him to his feet. The Palacestone rolled down the slight incline to come to rest against a snowy rock.
“You bear-pokin’ piece of scat! What are you doing with my trophy? That’s mine – no one else touches it!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Chot whimpered. “I... I only wanted to look.”
She punched him hard in the mouth and he fell over. Wiping at his bloody lip, he scuttled back on the ground. “I only wanted to look. To find a way to find... whatever you said we lost. I wanted you to be proud of me.”
“No, you wanted power for yourself, you simpering worm, and don’t try to tell me different. Get your things out of my lodge! Go den with Roff and the others – you’re not fit to share a chief’s furs!”
“Chieftess, please...”
“Go!” she barked, swing her spear wide. Chot scrambled to his feet and ran down the hillside. Satisfied that she had put him back in his place, Kahvi retrieved the Palacestone from its resting place.
She carried it higher up the hillside, higher up into the treeline. She found a shady patch of land that was still covered in snow, and she sat down, cradling the Palacestone in her lap as Chot had.
“Now you’ll do for me what you wouldn’t for Chot,” she breathed. “You’ll tell me how to find what’s missing.”
The Palacestone hummed and pulsed with light as always.
“Answer me!” Kahvi shouted. **Answer me!** she commanded in sending.
The Palacestone seem to sing in her hands. Its weight shifted, one moment heavy as a rock, the next light as a feather. Colours rippled across the crystal’s surface.
**Tell me what I’ve lost!** Kahvi’s anguished cry begged. **Tell me how to restore the Go-Backs to what we were! Tell me how to restore myself to the leader’s place! Tell me now!**
The cry echoed within the crystal facets. **Tell me... what I’ve lost... how to restore myself... tell me!**
The Palacestone quivered in faint response. A warm light emanated from the crystal spires. Kahvi felt a tide of stinging heat overwhelm her. “Wait... no... I didn’t mean–” she stammered as the force of the psychic response almost knocked her over.
Her hands were burning. The Palacestone was glowing hot as an ember now.
She was frozen in place, her head arched back.
“Help me...” Kahvi begged weakly.
A hand touched her face, guided her gaze upwards.
An elf-maiden stood before her, clothed in a gown of pure light. Her hair, as white as freshly fallen snow, crackled and shivered as if in a static storm. Her eyes, a startling shade of ice blue, seemed eeriely familiar, like a long-forgotten dream.
“Has it been so long, sister?” the maiden whispered.
Kahvi frowned. She knew that face.
“S-snow?”
She nodded.
“You’re dead. You died when Mardu was just a fawn.”
“And now I live here,” she indicated the Palacestone.
“...In my trophy?”
“The Palace is the Palace,” Snow said. “And we all dwell there eventually.”
“What do you want, spirit?” Kahvi stammered, her eyes wide with fear. “What do you want of me?”
“I want to show you what you’ve lost...” Snow touched her forehead. “Look at the Palacestone. Look at the patterns of light... light of all the souls who have come and gone... open your mind to what you were... memories long forgotten...”
The girl-cub Briar looked down sullenly as her father berated her. She had killed a fine ringtail for the tribe, enough to feed three or four elves. But she had used two arrows, while her companion Redbark had killed another with only one.
“Two arrows to kill this?” her father threw the creature to the ground. “That’s one too many. Do you think the prey will wait to be killed while you nock your arrow again? Three crustings and you’re still not the hunter Redbark is!”
Briar held back a sharp retort. She could have shouted that the ringtail would have died anyway, second arrow or not. She could have taunted that had she yanked out both arrows he wouldn’t have noticed. She could have called him a dung-eating rockskull who knew nothing about hunting with a bow. But she was paralyzed with fear and humilation. This was not simply her father who attacked her, but her chief as well. Perched on a rock next to his regal wolf, holding his twin weapons high, he was the most terrifying creature she had ever known.
Two great spears, one tipped with flaked blackstone, the other with a strange silver stone, sharp and hard, that shone in the autumn sunlight...
Two-Spear left down from the rock and ruffled Redbark’s auburn hair. “Maybe I’ll declare him chief’s-heir. What do you think?”
Redbark smiled up nervously at his chief, his father too. Briar turned and ran.
“Briar, wait!” Willowgreen begged. “Your kill is worthy.”
“Stop protecting the cub, healer!” Two-Spear shot back as Briar raced from camp. His taunting voice followed her. “Soft words won’t teach her what she needs. She knows her worth!”
“Oh, I know my worth, Father!” she wept as she crouched on the ground and tore up great fistfuls of grass. “It is nothing! The lowest wolf has more favor than me!”
A sending reached her, brought her up from the ground.
**Some believe you deserve the greatest favor of all, Briar,** the hidden elf sent. **The favor of pack leader.**
Briar got to her feet. Her father’s old friend Icetooth stood half-concealed by an oak tree.
When winter came Two-Spear led the Wolfriders south, away from the great plains of the Snow Country. There they came across a great empty cavern. Stalactites dripped from the ceiling of the single cave chamber. Pools of stagnant water seemed to glow in the dim light of their campfires. And in the center of the chamber, a six-tiered step pyramid, six great steps leading up to a crumbling stone throne.
“The High Ones’ Throne Chamber,” Two-Spear said. “They were here once. And they left their magic everywhere – in the rocks, in the water, in the air itself. I found this cave once... years ago. It’s been three eights of crustings since the tribe split, and three eights of wandering. But at last I’ve found it again. And I’ve brought you all here because this cave holds the answers I have sought all my life.”
The crumbling stone was no fit throne for a chief, and he ordered a new chair made of wood to sit atop the six-tiered dais. The Wolfriders numbered two eights and seven now, the youngest only five crustings old. And they obligingly set up camp inside the cave, though they distrusted its vastness, its emptiness. Most still remembered the snug root dens and hide tents of the Holt... the Holt they had been cast out from.
The story Two-Spear told at howls was that his sister and her faction had been weak, too weak to become a part of the world and fight the human threat. “They would have hidden in the trees forever,” he sneered. So he cast them aside. They could die in their trees. His Wolfriders would follow the example of Timmain, first among High Ones, who had taken on wolf form to destroy the humans who threatened them.
It was a pleasant fiction. But all but little Berry knew better. Even Briar knew the truth after many years spent listening to whispers. For Two-Spear’s “weak” sister Skyfire had challenged him for the chief’s lock, and when Two-Spear had been prepared to kill her as she lay bleeding on the ground, Skyfire’s faction turned against him. No, his departure had not been a merciful retreat, nor a triumphant battle charge. He had been driven out. Driven out by elves with such exotic names as Rellah and Talen, Sapling and Red Deer.
“Choose now!” he shouted to his followers as he was driven back for a hail of arrows and stones. “Stay here and hide forever, or choose a new path and come with me. Come with me!” his command turned to begging. “Greywolf... Willowgreen... come with me!”
“Go!” Skyfire cried as she propped herself up on a tribemate’s spear. “Go and die alone in your madness, brother!”
Nineteen elves chose exile with Two-Spear, twenty if one counted the unborn child in Willowgreen’s belly.
But her child was born dead – a little girl with a white dusting of hair.
Willowgreen had dissembled well, but Two-Spear soon suspected the truth. The dead baby was not his, but Greywolf’s.
Within three years Willowgreen was pregnant again, and five years after the split with Skyfire’s Wolfriders, Briar was born, every inch the daughter of Two-Spear. But he had no love for her. Instead he saved his praise for his son Redbark, sired on a sharp-tongued huntress named Brushflame, during those months after Willowgreen’s stillbirth when Two-Spear denied her his bed.
Why? Briar brooded. Because Redbark was a son, and all males, no matter how they might protest, wanted sons to one day displace them? Or because he had never forgiven Willowgreen for her failed Recognition to Greywolf?
The three were close as lifemates, to all outward appearances. But Briar knew better. Two-Spear resented them both with each crusting. He resented Greywolf's clumsy attempts to parent Briar, and Willowgreen's gentle, forgiving voice. He resented everyone, everything... everything save Redbark, Brair corrected. The bootlicking worm, always working to further ingratiate himself and his mother to the chief.
The winter wore on outside and slowly turned to spring. But the isolation the High Ones’ Throne Chamber was slowly eating at the Wolfriders.
The cave was evil; they all knew it. The pools gave off vapours that made them dizzy if they lingered near the water’s edge. The rocks seemed to pulse with life. The wolves did not like it, and most slept outside. The Wolfriders began to grow increasingly nervous as it seemed a presence in the rocks was watchingthem. Tempers flared. Bad dreams left them all tired and irritable. But Two-Spear would not be moved by those who urged they return to the woods or the plains of Snow Country. He bullied the naysayers and cuffed those who questioned him. He taunted those who wished for the stars over their heads and ridiculed those who feared the cavern’s magical aura.
“Don’t you understand?” he snarled one night when tempers once again wore thin. “This place was made by the High Ones! There is magic is here – magic we will fashion into wepaons and destroy the humans once and for all! I saw it this in–”
“Another one of your dreams, Two-Spear?” Icetooth snapped. “What are they – or this cavern to us?”
And Briar, her frustration kindled by months of winter denning, her rage fueled by sleepless nights and abusive days, seized his metal spear and threw it square at the chief’s wooden throne.
“What need have we for a chief who rules by mad dreams?” she challenged. “Arrow and spear, knife, tooth and claw are all a true warrior needs! You dishonour the Wolfriders if you’d have us wield magic!” She hefted his great stone-tipped spear and stood on the base of the dias. “ I say you are no longer fit to rule the Wolfriders! Your wits are cracked! It is time for a new leader! I claim the title of Blood of Four Chiefs, Father, just as Skyfire did! You may have fled from her, but you’ll not run from me. Yield, Father, or die!”
Two-Spear seized his metal spear and threw himself at her with bloodthirsty abandon. As Briar dodged the blows of his spear, as she sliced out with hers and gashed his ribcage, she realized that he would never yield, that he would not be satisfied until one of them was dead. And he wanted her dead, wanted her blood with a passion that eclipsed her own desire for vengeance.
“Will you show throat?” he taunted as he cornered her by the edge of the magic pool of water. The smell of the water made Briar swoon. Before she could make a move to defiance or surrender, he lunged at her, intent on murder. She rolled out of the way and swung her spearpoint into his bicep. Still she held back the killing blow. It enraged him. He threw her hard against a rock and snapped her spear in half. Then, even as she lay on the ground, helpless, he raised his spear to kill her.
Briar swung the broken spear shaft up to block his thrust. She scrambled to her feet, her free hand darting to her dagger. Again she did not kill, but instead dropped to the stone floor and hamstrung his left leg. As he fell, she got to her feet again, holding her dagger high. “Showing your throat at last, old wolf?” she demanded. “Bitter fruit isn’t it? It’s what you’ve fed me for years–”
He drove his spear up, burying the point in her abdomen. Briar felt the cold metal pierce through her body.
He twisted it, then yanked it free. An expressive of cruel delight crossed his face before blood loss made him fall. Briar tottered on the edge of the pool, then fell back into the dark waters.
The tribe froze in horror, save one. Willowgreen broke through the crowd, running towards her the pool. “Briar! Daughter!” she cried. She leapt into the water after her. But the magic of the pool was too powerful, and it overwhelmed her healer’s senses. She hit the water like dead weight, and floated face down. Greywolf rushed to her side and reached down to pull her free. The wolf-blood was strong in him, and the magic aura did not overpower him. The catatonic Willowgreen was laid next to the injured chief.
Two-Spear tried to pull himself up. “My chief, wait!” Brushflame begged. “Wait until the healer recovers.”
“I’ll heal like a wolf or not at all,” Two-Spear sneered. “To survive the trials that will come, we must know pain, respect pain, live with pain as wolves do!” He hauled himself up on his one good leg. “We leave this place! We leave the carcass of the loser of this challenge.”
“My chief, wait until Willowgreen is recovered.”
“No! No waiting! No talking! We leave now! Carry her if you will, or leave her behind with... the other one.”
“Let her awaken and howl for–”
“No! I will hear no howl for her! She has no name! I have never had a daughter! Do you hear me? Never!” He seized Redbark’s shoulder. “From today, this one is Blood of Chiefs! We will leave now, and never return.”
They left, Icetooth and Greywolf carrying Willowgreen’s body slung on a fur between them. She awoke after a day of travel. When she asked after Briar no one would answer her.
“We have no daughter!” Two-Spear shouted at her when she pressed him. “We have no child!” He pushed her down onto their sleeping furs roughly. “You’ve given me no fit child!”
Animals often confused violence and mating, and so did Two-Spear that second night of voluntary exile. And Willowgreen lay unmoving beneath him, silent and yielding. Only after he fell asleep beside her did she reach for her delicate hunting dagger and drive it home into his jugular.
“I will hear no howl for him!” Willowgreen declared when the Wolfriders were awakened by the sounds of struggle and found her bending over Two-Spear’s body, her hands and face stained with blood, her eyes hollow.
Two days of bloodshed, the chief’s line shattered, and the meek healer now filled with the fathomless rage of a childless mother. No one challenged her when she took over as pack leader. Only Redbark protested in his whining voice that he ought to be chief. But not even his own mother would support him.
Redbark and his mother died less than a month later, in what seemed to be a hunting accident. No one questioned Willowgreen. The healer’s cold empty stare was enough to silence any naysayers.
They wandered for many years, searching for a new place to settle. But for Briar’s death, and Two-Spear’s, nothing had changed.
One day Icetooth fell in a hunt, his skull fractured by a stag’s kick. Willowgreen bent over his body for a long time, trying to mend the damage. It was a hard fight, for Icetooth’s wolf half was ready to die. Only after she had battled with the wolf in him... made it somewhat less, did he recover. His right eye was lost but he would live.
The Wolfriders toiled hard by day and evening, and when they slept, they slept soundly. And so no one noticed as Willowgreen began secretly visiting the elves as they slept, slowly exerting her healing powers over them all, one by one.
The changes were hard to see at first. Scents slowly grew fainter. As their old wolves died, they found it harder to bond with new ones. Coordination and stamina began to fail them. Greywolf changed the most, losing his keen hearing and sense of smell.
Willowgreen assured them all that they were healthy, but the elders did not believe it.
The morning Icetooth decided he would confront the chief-healer about the strange changes in them, he awoke to find Greywolf and Willowgreen gone. They had taken all their belongings and fled. The Wolfriders searched, but no trace of them could be found.
And so Icetooth became chief, for he was the eldest of the Wolfriders and the most skilled hunter.
It was many more years before he realized what Willowgreen had done to them all. Only when the last of the wolves abandoned them, when the Icetooth could no longer scent a herd of stags right in front of him, did it become clear.
They were Wolfriders no longer. Willowgreen had taken Timmorn’s blood from their veins.
Exiles from the Holt. Exiles from the High One’s power. And now exiles from their own wolves.
The years passed, countless years. Snows, famines and conflict with both beasts and humans thinned their numbers. Recognitions were rare, but more and more elves seemed to be breeding without it, and so the dead were replaced. The elders died, one by one, until only Icetooth remained, chief to a pack of elves who had no memories of the Holt, no memories of the wolves. He imagined they thought his tales of the Wolfriders were nothing but the fantasies of an old elf. Even his sweet lifemate Sky looked doubtful. By the time their young daughter Snow was fully grown with her own cubs, the old tales would be lost entirely.
Even the names were different. Sky. Snow. Cloud. Sharp-Hail. Frost-Rain. Gone were the names that evoked ancient howls and images of sunlit woodlands. Now the names were simple descriptions of the natural world. And as the years passed, the multiple-syllable names began to be shortened more and more in their rough elfin tongue. Soon they would all have one-bite nicknames that would sound like nonsense to any other elf.
But there were no other elves.
Sometimes Icetooth wondered if Skyfire still lived, or if her cubs and cub’s cubs were now chiefs. But he never dwelt on it for very long. It didn’t matter now, not to them. They could never go back.
They were Wanderers.
Sometimes Icetooth wondered why he didn’t lay down and let the snow take him. But something kept him in his skin. There was work yet to be done.
Years of endless travel, until one day they returned to the High Ones’ Throne Chamber.
The strongest storm in memory forced to overwhelm them. But their chief remembered the landmarks, remembered the old stones.
“Here!” he called. “Shelter and room for a fire.”
They crowded into the cave, all three-eights-and-two of them. Young Snow was crying, and Sky held her close, rocking her gently.
“Dung!” Frost-Rain sneered. “It’s nothing but rock –”
“Hey!” Young Cloud cried. “There’s fresh water back here.”
“No!” Icetooth cried. “Don’t go to the water–”
Cloud screamed as he knew she would. Icetooth hiked over to the water, bracing himself for the sight of weathered elf bones.
He gasped. Briar lay on the bottom of the pool, as whole and beautiful as the day she had died. Her black-brown hair fanned out around her face. Her short tunic bared her abdomen, revealing unblemished skin, without a trace of the deadly wound. Could it be that she was still alive, somehow?
“Was Two-Spear right about this place?” Icetooth breathed.
“What?”
“We’ve got to get her out of there!” he snapped. He reached down and drew her up out of the water. His head spun at the magical aura, but he fought the urge to swoon. “Get a fire going, quickly!”
Briar’s eyes snapped open as he brushed her hair from her face. Her lips parted and she drew in an explosive breath.
She felt back into a coma as he stripped off her wet garments and bundled her up in a warm fur. For three days she lay motionless. On the fourth she began to toss and turn, mumbling words in her sleep. Strange words, like the elfin tongue, but twisted slightly. Icetooth wondered if they might be words of a lost language, the language of the High Ones. After all, it was High One’s magic that had somehow kept her alive all these years.
One phrase she kept repeating. “Tche ah... ah-kah-vi... tche... tche ah-kah-vi...”
He could only guess what it meant, though “ah-kah-vi” sounded not unlike their word for “hatred” and “rage.”
“Ah-kah-vi... ’kah-vi...” she murmured.
“Bold, beautiful sleeper,” he whispered. “What’s to be done with you? And how can I tell you what we’ve become?”
At length she awoke, mumbling more nonsense words.
“With luck, she won’t recognize me,” he whispered to the others. “And no one’s to tell her who I am. From now on, my name is Sharf.”
She struggled at first, the young warrior. She babbled in her strange tongue, and fought against the hands that held her. At length they calmed her, and at length her words slowly became more like those the Wanderers spoke.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Sharf. Do not worry, you are safe here.”
“And... and who am I?”
That held his tongue for a moment.
“You remember nothing?”
“No. Nothing. Where is this place? Who are you all? Why am I so cold?”
“You need worry about nothing, child. We will care for you.”
“Are you... are you my father? I... I remember calling for my father? Is that you?”
He hesitated. “Your blood sire died... many years ago. But I have been your father... in all other ways. You have been sick for many days. But you are better now. And I will help you recover.”
“Father.... Who... who am I?”
He smiled gently. “You are... Kahvi.”
At nineteen years old, she was an empty waterskin, waiting to be filled. Icetooth kept the truth from her, adapted his old howls to suit the new story he wished Kahvi to learn. She was the daughter of the former chief, named Spear, who had died shortly after her birth. Sharf had raised her himself, raised her with love and care. Her childhood had been unremarkable, until a fever had struck her down for days and stole her memories.
The tribe went along with the deception, grudgingly at first, then with greater enthusiasm, until finally they began to accept that it had always been so. As hard winters claimed more old ones, the younger elves grew up knowing no better than Kahvi herself. Sharf’s own daughter Snow grew up believing Kahvi to be her elder sister.
Kahvi grew stronger. Sharf patiently re-taught her uses of the spear and bow. As time wore on she won friends, lovemates, and loyal followers. As the years passed, they left the uncertainty of the Throne Chamber behind and moved across the highlands of Snow Country. One day finally came when Sharf decided he had finished his work.
He fell while fighting to subdue an eight-pronged stag. Kahvi reached his side just as he died. “Wear your hair in the four braids,” he whispered. “That’s the chief’s mark. No one else... has the head or the guts to lead them... I’ll tell the old wolf myself, Kahvi...”
She wondered what he meant.
They howled for Sharf. And they danced.
Kahvi braided her hair in front of her ears and led the Wanderers on into unknown lands. The human creatures advanced into Snow Country, and they correspondingly moved further north into the highlands. They moved between hunting grounds with the seasons. In time they caught young stags and trained them for riding. They encountered a strange band of green-skinned creatures, neither human nor elf, and freed an old broken elf from their bonds. His name was Ekuar, he told them, and the strange creatures who enslaved him: trolls.
Ekuar was weak at first, like Kahvi had once been. And his mind was never entirely whole. But he kept up with the others, and in time he became as much a Wanderer as any of them.
Occasionally a few spoke of returning to the old cave and the magic inside. But Kahvi had learned Sharf’s lessons well.
“We need no home, no hurst!” Kahvi declared one night as they lit a bonfire on the plains and danced about it. “We need no lodge-roof between our heads and the stars. We need no showy magic, no High Ones’ trophy! We are Wanderers – we move with the herds and we live with the tug and pull of this world. We need nothing but what we can carry on our backs, and the tales we carry in our hearts. We carry our home in our hearts! Wherever we travel, whatever we face, we will carry that truth with us! Dance, warriors! Life gets no sweeter than this! We are Wanderers, and we are free! We are Wanderers, and we are home!”
Home...
Snow was falling, swirling around her. The Palacestone had become dead weight in her hands. “Why?” she sobbed. “Why did you show me this?”
You needed to remember.
“Not that... not – pain... sorrow.”
Strength forged of sorrow. The strength to lead your tribemates where no others could.
“Sharf... my father... Two-Spear... my tribe, nothing but outcasts...”
And we survived to be our father’s revenge, sister.
“Not your sister...” Kahvi wept, as the mounting gale battered her shoulders, pushing her down into the freshly fallen snow. “Two-Spear... Wolfriders... not... Wolfriders...”
“I can’t find Kahvi anywhere,” Krim said excitedly. Teir stuck his head out the door of the hut. A blizzard had come down the mountain and heavy wet snowflakes were falling from the gray sky. The sun was setting early, as it always did in the melting time, and darkness was beginning to fall.
“She’s been gone for hours,” Krim added.
“Kahvi is... Kahvi. I’m sure she can take care of herself.”
Chot showed up at Krim’s side, clutching his parka about his shoulders. “I saw her when the sun was high.”
“You did? Where?”
He flinched under Krim’s hard stare. “Well... I took the Palacestone from her hut... I just wanted to look in it. But she found me and took it back.”
“The Palacestone?” Teir’s head snapped up. Everyone knew how easily Kahvi fell under the stone’s sway. “Where? Where did you last see her?”
“Uh... um... up the hillside, over there.” He pointed over his shoulder.
“Show us!” Teir gathered a spare fur and his spear. He and Krim followed Chot as the jittery Go-Back led them into the treeline and up the gentle hillside.
They found Kahvi lying in the snow, her arms wrapped about the Palacestone. She was alive, but barely-conscious, moaning softly. Teir gathered her up in his arms and cast the fur over her shoulders.
“Mother! Kahvi! Wake up!”
“Snow...” she murmured.
“Yes, it’s snowing,” he said patiently, as if to a child.
“Snow... why did you leave... why did you show me?”
He couldn’t make sense of her ramblings. But she did not fight him as he lifted her up, and he was grateful for it. Carrying her slung in his arms, he staggered down the hillside, back to camp.
“No... how can... no...” Kahvi continued to babble as Teir carried her into her hut. Krim, Chot and Mardu crowed around mother and son anxiously. Suddenly Kahvi sat up, furious. “Out! Out! All of you! Out! Out!”
They slowly withdrew, but Kahvi’s hand shot out and caught Teir’s wrist. “No, you stay.”
Teir frowned. Krim scowled. Mardu and Chot were simply glad to escape.
“What is it?” Teir asked.
“No...” Kahvi murmured. “Oh... of all those...” she looked up at him, her eyes intense. “What I tell you now can go nowhere else – nowhere! Or I’ll stop chattering about it and finally show you your guts on my spear! Understand?”
Teir nodded. “Kahvi... what is it?”
Slowly, Kahvi confessed what she had seen in the Palacestone: Snow’s spirit, the origins of the tribe, and her own Wolfrider blood.
“By the Great Ice Wall,” Teir breathed. “You really mean it! So... we were once Wolfriders?”
“Why do you sound so surprised? How else do you think you got that pack of wolves chasing you around?”
“I... I always thought animals just... liked me. The way they like Father, because of the music he makes.”
“It’s more than that. Go back far enough,” she laughed at the unintended pun, “and we once rode on wolfback and howled instead of danced.”
Teir shook his head. “Imagine... Go-Back and Wolfrider fighting together... living together... all those years ago – kin and never knowing it.”
“And they must never know it!”
“Why not?”
“Why not? You fool – shall we boast that we’re nothing but cast-off Wolfriders, leavings of a mad kin-slaughtering chief? That – that creature was my father! And your grandsire! Do you want that blood in your veins? Do you want everyone to know that we are kin to madness? And what do you think the Wolfriders would say if they knew? What would Swift say? Would she be satisfied keeping the two halves apart, or would I have to fight–”
“Mother! What makes you think the wolf-chief would want–”
“Oh, we are not good enough for her to take in, is that it? Don’t you think she’d relish the chance to turn the spawn of Two-Spear’s Madness into something a Wolfrider would be proud to keep?”
“Don’t talk like that. These are your tribemates! You’ve raised them up from the muck where Two-Spear left them! You’ve turned them into warriors worthy of the Palace. Don’t you think the wolf-chief would be proud of you, her distant kin, if she knew just how long you’ve lived, just how much you’ve done for your tribe?”
“I don’t need her pity. And I don’t need her approval. I was leading my folk across the plains when her grandsire’s grandsire was not yet a glimmer in anyone’s eye!”
“Then why are you ashamed? Why does the truth frighten you?”
“To hear my father was a mad raving beast who sought my death? Would that not frighten you?”
“Well...” Teir averted his eyes. Kahvi thumped his shoulder hard.
“Hold back your tongue, snake-talker! You know I never–”
Teir met her hard stare. “I know you wish I’d never been born. You’ve said so enough times.”
Kahvi looked away. “You need toughening up, boy. You’re too soft. A chief needs to be make of sterner stuff.”
“When did I ever say I wanted to be chief?”
“I could die at any moment.”
“Lately it seems you’ve been eager to die.”
Kahvi’s head snapped up. “The world isn’t won by soft-hearted warriors. What’s the point of life if you won’t strive for greatness?”
“And risking your neck to catch seabirds? And trying to spear a seabat from a leaking boat? And wandering off into a blizzard with the Palacestone?”
“Who are you to question me?”
“Your son, Mother, as much as you’d like to deny it!”
Once again a wall of antagonism rose between them. Teir got up to leave. But Kahvi caught his wrist and pulled him back down to the furs. “I’m not through with you!”
“What?”
Kahvi heaved a great sigh. “I don’t understand why!”
“‘Why’ what?”
“I asked that cursed rock to show me what we’d lost – how to recover our pride, purpose. Why did Snow show me all that – despair, hatred and endless pointless wanderings? What has that got to do with my tribe?”
“Maybe that is the point.”
“What is?”
“You said that when you were Wanderers you needed no Holt, no High One’s magic. No trophy. You carried your home in your heart, and your purpose too. Maybe that’s what the Go-Backs need now – not trophies and magic and one hill that we’ll defend to the death, but that sense of purpose that comes from knowing our own hearts. Maybe that’s what you have to... go back to.”
Kahvi curled her lip.
“Two-Spear thought he gave his tribe purpose, but he only gave them mad dreams. Sharf had to fight just to keep his tribe alive. But you lifted them up from something more than outcast Wolfriders. And you can do it again.”
“Such confidence, from you?”
Teir smiled tightly. “You just need to remember how to be a chief.”
“Were I not so cursed tired, I’d box your ears for that.”
Teir got to his feet. This time Kahvi did not stop him.
“Think about it,” he said.
She sighed miserably. “I am lost.”
“Then find yourself, Mother. And don’t turn your back on those who still stand by you. Who love you.”
She looked up. Teir had already parted the curtain and stepped out. But Krim hovered nervously in the doorway, peering at her chieftess.
Another year passed at the point. Manx was just beginning to stagger about on the beach, and five more fawns had been born. The beach of small huts was gone – now a lodge of driftwood, mammoth bones and stone stood in the center of the beach, flanked by two smaller lodges. Cheider had become intrigued with the idea of paddling across the water to reach the deeper shoals of fish, and he and his friends were constantly experimenting with canoes of various shapes.
Kahvi had reclaimed her place as respected leader. Of her vision-quest she told the tribe little, simply that she had relived the birth of the Go-Backs, and that long ago, the Go-Backs had been close kin to the Wolfriders. As a trophy, she offered the conquest of this strange world of water and ice. “What need have we for High Ones’ magic? We have a new land to make ours! Let the trolls have the barren hills of the Frozen Mountains. We will go back to our roots, to the days when we could make a life anywhere the winds took us. And I say we will make our life here!”
It was a good dream, and many embraced it. But for some, the great Ice Bridge beckoned them south. “We could cross over into the New Land,” Teir mused. “Who knows... maybe the Wolfriders are only a moon’s journey beyond it?”
“Wouldn’t that be a cause for boasting!” Kirjan laughed. “The Go-Backs find a passage across the Vastdeep itself!”
It was not long before idle wondering turned into something more. And Kahvi was not surprised when Mardu asked permission to take an expedition over the Ice Bridge.
“I’d ask you why you are here instead of my son, but I know better,” she chuckled. “He’s the force behind this – don’t deny it, Mardu. But...” Kahvi smiled then, “he knows as well as I that you are the only one the tribe would trust to lead them into the unknown.”
The explorers planned to leave in the late winter, when the ice would be thickest. Kahvi lingered on the sidelines and watched as Teir and Mardu slowly assembled a tribe. In the end, a full fourteen elves would be travelling south across the ice bridge – fifteen including little Manx.
“You’re a fool to take that fawn on the ice,” Kahvi said. “And in long-dark, no less.”
“We’re safer while the ice is rock hard,” Mardu countered gently.
Soon they were ready to leave by the long night of winter. The bay was frozen over. The doors to the three lodges were hidden under the snow, and the elves crawled in and out through the smoke-hole in the roofs. The northern lights lit the way across the great Ice Bridge.
Mardu and Kahvi clasped hands in farewell. Manx was strapped to his mother’s back, softly bundled in warm rabbit-skins. Behind Mardu her new tribemates waited anxiously. They took no stags with them, only a single dugout canoe Kiv and Cheider had made by burning and hacking their way through a massive pine tree. Two sled-runners were set under the canoe to help it glide across the ice.
“No stags, no lodge,” Kahvi complained. “You’ll all fall through a crack in the ice.”
“We’ll do all right,” Mardu said. “But thank you, for your concern, chieftess.”
“Clear trails!” the Go-Backs called.
“We’ll be back,” Mardu said. “You’ll be singing our quest to your children’s children.”
“Go, if you’re going,” Kahvi said at length. “You’re losing time.”
Mardu turned to Vok, Teir and Kirjan. “Well, let’s be off.”
“Good hunting!” the Go-Backs called as the fifteen elves slowly turned and set off down the frozen beach.
“Open skies!” “Safe journey.”
“Kahvi wouldn’t even wish us well,” Teir murmured as they hiked away from the camp.
“Kahvi hates farewells,” Mardu whispered back.
The shifting blues and violets of the aurorae lit the path leading up the slope of the great glacier. Six Go-Backs hauled the great sled-canoe up the gentlest grade while Mardu and Teir led the explorers onto the flat gravel-laden plateau of the glacier.
“They’re never coming back,” Kiv growled as Kahvi’s Go-Backs watched the last elf disappear into the night.
“Hey!” Cheider snapped. “You don’t think Mardu–”
“Oh, they’ll make it,” Kiv said. “They’ll find some nice hunting grounds and set up camp. But they’re never coming back here. One tribe became two tonight, and that’s snow’s truth!”
“Kahvi?” Krim looked to the chieftess.
Kahvi turned back to the lodge. “What’s done is done. Let’s go. We have meat to butcher and snow to clear come the next fire.”
The northern lights shimmered and looped in great blue arcs overhead. Under the faint light, the glacier was a glittering bridge of silver and black stretching out over the sea. “A good omen,” Vok said, as he double-laced the straps on Manx’s little carrier. He pinched the toddler’s cheek and Manx giggled.
“Baba!” he cooed, trying to squirm free. But his arms and legs were securely wrapped at his sides in ravvit-skins.
“Shh, you be good, little egg,” Vok tapped his nose. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we rest.”
“Let’s go,” Mardu hefted her spear. “With luck we’ll reach land in a few days.”
Kahvi’s Go-Backs burrowed under their sleeping furs while the time-keeper sat at the hearth-fire, watching the flames slowly die. When the embers needed turning and more kindling, the warriors would rise and return to work. It was only way they could measure days in the long-dark of winter.
Krim dozed under the furs, her blond hair just peeking out above the bearskin. But Kahvi sat up on her bed, her eyes on the Palacestone sitting in its holder just inside the curtain partition that marked Kahvi’s private bed.
She stared into the glowing colours, hoping to make out a pattern. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she lifted the Palacestone from its holder.
It was heavy, as it always was when she was sad.
“Snow? Sharf – Father? Are you in there?” she whispered.
The stone did not answer.
“Please... take care of them,” she whispered. “Wherever they go... watch over them.”
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts