The words came to Faolan, but he did not know from where. He dared not speak them aloud. It was as if he were in a byrrgis and the signals all had to be passed in silence until the barks of cease chase were howled. He looked hard at the wolves assembled around him and hoped they saw something in his eyes that was more urgent than words.
“As chieftain of this clan,” Faolan continued, “you need to answer an important question. When was your last rotation of the Blood Watch?”
“I … I … I’m not sure.”
“Not sure?” Edme stepped forward. The chieftain was trembling so hard he could barely answer. “Try to remember.”
“Maybe at the beginning of the New Antlers’ Moon?”
“Maybe, just maybe?” Edme asked. Faolan and Edme looked at each other in dismay.
There was a disturbance at the mouth of the cave. Alastrine, the skreeleen of the Carreg Gaer, made her way in.
“The Blood Watch wolves have not been rotated for almost two moons. Some have come back, such as Stellan, though they were not called. We thank Lupus she did come back, for she is our best outflanker. But Caila has not returned.”
“She ain’t been much of a point wolf since her mate jumped the star ladder,” someone called out from the back of the cave.
“Shame on you!” Alastrine charged the wolf. “Is that the way to speak of a wolf’s passing? This is profane!”
Faolan and Edme were shocked as well, but Alastrine kindled a spark of hope within them. At last a rational wolf with a sense of dignity!
But their question had been answered — answered in a way that they dreaded reporting to the Fengo. They must leave immediately to follow the Fengo’s command and shore up the Blood Watch. Faolan decided to take Mhairie and Dearlea with them. The thought of leaving the two sisters with the MacDuncan clan in its present state was abhorrent. They would all travel together to the Blood Watch and find the sisters’ mother, Caila. But before they left, Faolan announced to the wolves assembled in the gadderheal that, by the full authority granted him by the Fengo, he was appointing Alastrine first lieutenant to the chieftain in place of Lord Adair. Liam MacDuncan looked profoundly relieved.
CHAPTER NINE
THE FIRST SIGN
FAOLAN’S THOUGHTS BRIMMED with memories of Thunderheart as he set out with Edme, Mhairie, and Dearlea through the slashing wind toward the border and the Blood Watch. A northwest wind was blowing and the gusts slammed squarely into their faces, making the pace excruciatingly slow. They were traveling almost the same route he had taken when he was just a yearling and had gone in search of his beloved second Milk Giver when she had disappeared from their winter den. He had headed toward the Outermost in hopes of finding her.
However, he had not been as hungry then as he was now.
Since they left the MacDuncan Carreg Gaer, the supply of small game and even the ever-dependable snow hares had dwindled. They had to take more frequent rests, for they simply did not have the energy against this wind. And when they rested, their stomachs rumbled. Edme, who was the smallest of the four, seemed to produce the loudest rumbles. “Truly an example of a bark worse than a bite,” she quipped, then sighed. “Aah, for a bite!”
“Remember when we used to think snow hares were slightly disgusting?” Dearlea mused.
“It was just those pinkish eyes. Their meat was fine,” Mhairie replied.
“I wouldn’t care now if they had bright purple eyes,” Dearlea said.
The talk of food scarcities led to other thoughts in Faolan’s mind.
“Edme,” he said as they trotted along after their most recent rest. “If the herds don’t come and even the small game vanishes, there will be famine. And you and I both know who will die first.”
Edme halted. Her eye grew immense with anxiety. “The gnaw wolves, of course. They’re always the last to eat.”
“Yes, and last to eat during a famine means the gnaw wolves get nothing. But there’s a way to help the gnaw wolves and help the Blood Watch as well.”
Edme stopped in her tracks and turned to Faolan. “Brilliant,” she exclaimed.
“I haven’t even told you yet.”
“You don’t need to. I should have thought of it myself. We round up as many of our old gnaw wolf friends as possible and take them with us to the Blood Watch.”
“Yes, and there’s that new one of the MacDonegal clan — what’s his name — Streak?”
“The question is, will the pack lords let them go?” Edme said.
“It’s not a question at all. Remember, we are acting on direct orders of the Fengo. The Fengo said to fix the Blood Watch.”
Edme blinked. “You’re right.” She paused. “I never thought of it that way.” Edme then turned to speak to Mhairie and Dearlea. “We’ve made a decision. We want to gather all the gnaw wolves we can and take them to the Blood Watch to fill in.”
“That’s a brilliant idea!” Mhairie said. “Tamsen from the Blue Rock Pack has been at the Blood Watch almost as long as our mum. If she had been back when we teamed with the Blue Rock byrrgis, it wouldn’t have been such a catastrophe. Maybe if there are more blooders, she can return to her pack.”
With the decision to find gnaw wolves, they altered their course for the MacAngus summer camp, hoping to find the gnaw wolf Tearlach.
The four wolves had not been traveling long when all of a sudden the wind brought an alarming scent, and their hackles rose. It was the smell of a dead wolf, but on its edges was a hauntingly familiar scent.
“Tearlach!” Faolan and Edme both howled at once. They raced forward toward a small mound in the snow.
“Tearlach!” Edme’s voice broke as they stared at the earless MacAngus gnaw wolf. She squeezed her single eye shut, but a tear leaked out from it. She gulped. “This seems like a cruel joke, doesn’t it.” She gulped again to suppress a sob. “Just when we decided to take gnaw wolves to the Blood Watch and give them a real chance in life! We were right — they are the first to die!”
Edme and Faolan huddled together. Dearlea and Mhairie stood slightly apart and shuddered as they looked on. The two Watch wolves seemed to be holding each other up as grief racked them.
“This is the first true sign of famine,” Faolan whispered.
The four wolves crept closer to the body of the MacAngus gnaw wolf. They all noticed the same thing. Tearlach had ground his face into the snow, but not in the normal submission posture for a gnaw wolf.
“It’s as if he’s listening for something,” Edme said.
“Listening to the earth beneath the snow and crust of ice,” Faolan said, looking down at the jutting bones of the starved wolf.
“But what could he possibly hear? He’s earless,” Dearlea said.
Faolan and Edme looked up. Both the sisters seemed confounded. What neither one understood — for how could they, being sound wolves not cursed to live without ears or eyes or with a splayed paw — was that a gnaw wolf’s flaws often became its strengths. Had not the Fengo himself said at the gaddergnaw that Edme’s eye guided her like a spirit from the Cave of Souls? And Faolan, despite his splayed paw, ran faster and could jump higher than any other wolf. Tearlach was no exception. Despite his missing ears, he had always been the one to overhear conversations, especially those not meant for gnaw wolves. Now they could only wonder what he had been listening to. Hearing?
“We better move on, I guess,” Dearlea said in a soft voice.
Edme looked at Faolan. “No, not yet.” And in the next moment both young wolves crouched down and began a series of intricate submission postures that were both delicate and beautiful. And then they began to bay, bay so mournfully that it brought tears to the two sisters’ eyes.
Your tangled body will straighten
Your way shall be swift
With hardly a leap your spirit
Will lift
Heed the call of the Great Wolf
You hear it so bright
Like silver it comes on the darkest night
Away ?
?? away to the Cave of Souls
And never again will you suffer the rage
You are a gnaw wolf no more
But noble, highborn
And never again shall you suffer the scorn.
“Where did you learn that beautiful song?” Mhairie asked.
It was Faolan and Edme’s turn to be confounded. They looked at each other with undisguised astonishment.
“It … it …” Edme stammered. “It just came to us.”
Faolan looked down at the body of Tearlach. “We’d best be on our way. There’s not much time left for these poor fellows.”
Then out from the swirling snow another figure appeared on a mound, and a painful cry rose up. “Faolan!”
Hope sprouted in Faolan like grass in the Moon of New Antlers. There was such music in that cry, a sonorous clarity like no other wolf’s howl. Faolan knew it could be only one animal: the Whistler.
CHAPTER TEN
THE WHISTLER
IF IT WAS POSSIBLE, THE WHISTLER seemed even thinner than Tearlach. There was one furless patch on his hips where bone had actually split the skin. Within seconds of seeing his friends, the Whistler had collapsed and fallen into a delirium. The four wolves had dragged his almost lifeless body to a small cave that most likely had been used as a whelping den. Edme quickly found a family of mice. She had dispatched them with a few sharp bites and was attempting to feed small bits of rodent to the Whistler when Faolan spotted a relatively plump snow hare.
“It’s a miracle!” Edme exclaimed when Faolan came back with it.
“Wherever did you find him?” Dearlea asked. “It’s our first in days.”
“I think Lupus was looking out for the Whistler,” Faolan said, and dropped the snow hare.
“Let him drink the blood,” Mhairie said. “Is the life artery untorn?”
“Yes, I just crushed his skull.”
“Good. This is something our mum taught us.”
Deftly, Mhairie punctured the life-pumping artery and, with the first weak spurt, picked it up and pressed it to the Whistler’s mouth.
“Now, since its heart has stopped beating, we have to pound on the hare’s body to pump the blood into the Whistler,” Dearlea said.
It did not take long to exhaust the blood of the snow hare, but it was working. The Whistler opened his eyes, blinked once or twice, then spoke in a ragged sibilance.
“Faolan, remember that buck you brought down when we first met?”
“Of course, old friend.”
“Oh, my, how you bore down on that buck. I was pretty hungry back then, too.”
It always amazed Faolan that when the Whistler spoke, his voice was a hoarse whistle, but when he howled, it was as melodious as the best skreeleen’s.
“Don’t talk, Whistler. Save your strength.”
“Eat a bit of the meat,” Dearlea offered.
“So much for submission rituals,” the Whistler croaked. Faolan and Edme looked at each other and rolled their eyes. This was pure Whistler. He somehow managed to be grim and funny at the same time. It was a survival strategy that worked.
“I think,” Mhairie said, “that the time for submission rituals is over. We are all gnaw wolves now, like it or not.”
Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler looked at her curiously. “What exactly do you mean, Mhairie?” Edme asked.
Dearlea didn’t wait for her sister to answer. “I know what she means. You saw the MacDuncans fighting in the gadderheal. There is no order. The clans are breaking down. It’s becoming each wolf for herself, or so it seems.”
“But there has to be some order or else we’ll never survive,” said Edme.
“Maybe we could skip the gnaw wolf part,” the Whistler said sleepily.
“Yes,” Mhairie said. Then, looking at each of her fellow travelers, she spoke in a low voice. “Maybe we just have to become a new clan ourselves.”
Faolan bristled. “You forget. There is still the Watch at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. It is very much in order, and we are on a mission to go to the Blood Watch. To make sure it still stands and to fix it.”
“Blood Watch.” The words seemed to rouse the Whistler. “You know Tamsen — she was sent to the Blood Watch, but she’s been gone for a moon or more now. I was sent out to find her. I thought I had found her track, but then I picked up another.”
The speech had clearly exhausted the Whistler, but Faolan felt he had to ask just one more question. “Whose was that?”
“Tearlach — I thought … I thought he might be onto something. He could hear so well.”
“That’s exactly how we found him, Whistler — with his ear to the ground. We thought he had caught the hoof beats of a herd.”
“A herd — or something else,” the Whistler said.
“What else?”
“The Whisperers,” the Whistler replied and slid his eyes to one side, almost as if he was afraid to say the words.
“The Whisperers?” the other wolves asked.
“You know the ringing rocks?” the Whistler asked.
“Yes, of course,” Mhairie said. “Everyone knows about the ringing rocks. They are scattered all over the Beyond. But what do they have to do with anything?” Mhairie pressed.
The Whistler paused before answering, as if gathering strength to speak. “In this strange weather, the rocks seem to whisper into the ground. They whisper if you scratch them with your claws. It’s a messaging system among certain wolves.”
“Certain wolves?” Faolan asked.
“Yes, desperate wolves. They don’t want to howl, for then all would know.”
“But why? Are they stealing food from their clans?”
“No … no, they are summoning Skaarsgard to … to … take them up.” The Whistler almost choked as he spoke.
Dearlea’s eyes grew so immense that it seemed as if a green light suffused the dimness of the whelping den. “They are begging for death?”
“Dancing for death,” the Whistler rasped.
“What?” The four wolves were so astonished they could hardly utter another word. Edme tossed her head as if attempting to shake off what she’d heard.
“Have you seen it, Whistler?” Faolan asked.
“No, but the rumors fly about faster than owls — and owls, by the way, have seen it. I’m sure,” the Whistler replied.
Faolan shut his eyes tight. How he wished he could find Gwynneth. He could not count the moons since he had last seen her.
The Whistler continued. “I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve heard about it. I met up with Creakle about a moon or so ago. There’s a lot of it down in the MacDuff territory. You know how superstitious they have always been.”
Edme wrinkled up her face in thought. “Are you sure that it could not have been some way of trying to call the herds? You know, hearken them to their summer feeding grounds?”
“They weren’t calling herds, Edme. They were calling Skaars, and that is what they call themselves — Skaars dancers. The dance is spreading and the wolves are dying, dying because they exhaust themselves.”
“But how does the messaging system work?” Edme asked.
“They scratch on the rocks to send out a message that calls to the Prophet.”
“Prophet?” Faolan asked. “What prophet?”
“They think this prophet is some sort of link on the Great Chain between earth and the ladder of Skaarsgard.”
“What?” The four wolves were aghast. This was getting worse and worse.
“You can’t tinker with the Great Chain. The Great Chain is the Great Chain,” Mhairie blurted out fiercely.
Edme spoke with a sharp edge to her voice. “Gnaw wolves know this better than anyone. Our first task when we return to our clan is to start gnawing the Great Chain on bones. On average, a gnaw wolf has gnawed one thousand bones with the Great Chain by the time he gets to the Ring. Let me assure you there are no links to be added or subtracted. To do so would be grounds for immediate expulsion from the Beyond. There is no prophet.
”
“What you say is true, but it does not mean they are not calling to one. They are,” the Whistler said levelly.
“There’s very little sense to be made from any of it,” Faolan said.
Outside the den, the wind roared and Faolan wondered if on some ice-sheathed ringing rock a desperate wolf was using the last of its energy to scratch a message of death.
“This was a whelping den, wasn’t it?” Edme asked to break the ominous silence that had settled upon them all.
“Yes,” Dearlea said. She looked at Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler. “I guess none of you really knew about whelping dens, being gnaw wolves.”
“Tummfraws were our whelping dens,” the Whistler said curtly. His strength was definitely returning. “But it must have been nice,” he added softly.
The two sisters nodded. Then Dearlea said quietly, “At least we had a mother — a very good mother — but you three never really had one.”
“You know” — the Whistler spoke suddenly as if he sensed that the tension needed to be broken — “Tearlach thought that he had seen his mother once.”
“How did he know the wolf he saw was his mother?” Dearlea asked.
“Her ears.”
“Her ears!” the sisters exclaimed.
“Yes, he said that if he had had ears, he knew they would look just like those.”
“Odd, very odd,” Mhairie mused.
But it did not strike Faolan as odd at all. He had met his first Milk Giver, Morag, in the last hours of her life, but when he saw her he realized that she had hovered on the edges of his consciousness throughout his entire life. A wisp of fog passed through his mind, stirring his marrow and then dissolving like mist in the noonday sun. Faolan shivered, and he shook his head almost violently.