When had it last been seen, Mavin asked, only to be confronted with shrugs and disclaimers. The children had not been allowed to play outside lately, she was told. Not for some time. So they had not seen it. No one went outside much, certainly not alone at dusk, and the bird had always avoided groups. Perhaps it was still there. Perhaps not.
Mavin decided to stay a while and look around for herself. When she asked why people no longer ventured from their locked houses with the barred windows and doors, she did so in that flat, i ncurious voice she had learned to use in her travels, one which evinced a polite interest but without sufficient avidity to stir concern among casual talkers.
“Because,” she was told, “they have released the Wolf.” The person who told her this glanced about with frightened eyes and would say nothing else. Stepping away from this encounter, Mavin looked into the faces of others to find both fear and anger there.
When she enquired, they said they were not Gamesmen, that they repudiated Gaming as a wicked thing, if indeed even a tenth of what was said about it was true. They did not want to be thought of as pawns, however. They were an ancient people, they said, with their own ways of doing things. Mavin smiled her traveler’s smile, said nothing about herself at all, but made a habit of sitting about in the commons room of her inn at night, listening.
At first there was little conversation. The people who came there at the supper hour were the lone men and women of the town, those without family. They ate silently, drank silently, and many of them left once they had eaten so that the room was almost empty by dusk. As the evenings wore on, however, a few truculent men and a leathery woman or two found their way to the inn to drink wine or beer and huddle in the warmth of the fire. Mavin, with a laconic utterance, offered to buy drink for those present. Later in each evening that courtesy was returned. On the third or fourth night she sat near one old couple who, when the wine had bubbled its way through to their tongues, began to talk, not much, but some.
“Stranger woman, you’ll stay here in the place after dark at night, won’t you?”
“I’d planned on it,” said Mavin.
“Don’t go out at night. You’re not young as most of the girls or children who’ve been et, but you’re female, and the good Guardians witness the Wolf has eaten older.”
Mavin thought about this for a while, not wanting to seem too interested. “Is that the same Wolf I’m told was let out?”
“There is no other,” said the old woman. “And thanks be to all the Guardians for that.”
“What had he done, to be locked up?” She kept her voice calm, almost uninterested, so the woman would not feel it would be troublesome to tell her.
“Killed a woman. Drank her blood. And after crying remorse a nd swearing he would not do such a thing again.”
“Oh,” said Mavin. “Then the Wolf had been locked up before.”
“Aye,” responded the oldster. “Twice, now. First time he was young, the wolf. There were those said young ones find society troublesome and strange, so it wouldn’t do to set him down too hard for it. So, that time they locked him up for a season, no time at all.”
“And the second time?” Mavin prompted.
“Well second time they locked him for a full year. A full year. That’s a weary long time, they said. A full year. Tssh. Seems years go past like autumn birds to me, all in a flock, so fast you can’t see them clear. But then, I’m old.”
“So they’ve let him out?” Mavin prompted again.
“Well, the time they set for him was done. Since it’s done, they l et him out.”
“The time seems very short. For one who ate a young woman a nd drank her blood.”
The oldsters shifted uncomfortably on their chairs, and Mavin changed the subject. Still, she thought a year seemed a very short t ime indeed.
When all had gone save the innkeeper himself, she yawned her way past him on the stairs, remarking as she did so that the two oldsters had seemed upset at the short confinement of the Wolf.
“Those two,” snorted the innkeeper, wiping his hands on his protruding, apron-covered belly. “They’re among those howling loudest at the cost of it. Wolf isn’t eating them, they say, so why should they want to pay for it?”
“Pay for what?” asked Mavin, unable to keep the curiosity out o f her voice.
“Pay to keep him locked up, woman! You think it comes free?” And he snorted his way to his rest, shaking his head up all three flights of stairs, calling back down to her, “Tell truth, though. They’ve got nothing. It’s all they can do to keep their own hovel warm without buying firewood for the Wolf.”
Next day Mavin had strolled about the town, seeking among the children for any who might have seen the white bird. In her walk she passed the prison lately vacated by the wolf. Though it looked like a dreary place, it had every comfort in it of warmth and food and drink and soft mattresses and a shelf of amusements and a place to run in for exercise. Seeing it, Mavin well knew it had cost treasure t o keep it, for the wood to burn to warm for it for a winter alone would have cost many days’ labor, and the food many days’ labor more, to say nothing of the guards who would have been needed night and day.
A number of children claimed to have seen the bird. One lovely girl of about ten years believed it had flown away south. Her name was Janine, called Janny, and she tagged after Mavin for the better part of five days, talking of the bird, the dawn cliffs, of life and the ways of the world while begging for stories of that world in return. The child was artless and delightful, full of ready laughter. Though Mavin had learned all there was to learn about the white bird, she put off her travels for a time out of simple joy in the girl’s company.
One night there was a new face at the inn, a local preacher of Landizot, one Ristor Kyndle, whose house had been burned down by someone or something and would live at the inn while it was being rebuilt. Seeing Mavin was a stranger to the place, he set about making himself pleasant with the intent of converting her to the faith of Landizot and the Guardians. Talk turned, as it often did, to the Wolf.
“Why didn’t they kill the Wolf when they caught him?” she asked. “Or, if they won’t do that, why don’t they lock the Wolf in a cage of iron here in the village square and let him shiver when the nights are cold. Surely he would be no colder than the corpses of the young women and children who lie in your burying ground?”
The pastor was much disturbed at this. “It would be cruel,” he said. “Cruel to treat a person so. We are good people. Not cruel people.”
Mavin shook her head, but withheld any judgment. If there was anything she had learned in long travels here and there, it was that to most people in the world, every unfamiliar thing was considered unacceptably strange. She told herself she was undoubtedly as odd to them as they were to her, and let the matter go. She determined to continue her search for Handbright as soon as the weather warmed only a little. She stopped asking questions and settled into the place, merely waiting for the snows to melt.
But before the thaw came a wicked murder of a young girl child of the town. Her body was found at the edge of the woods, dragged there by something. There was blood on the snow, and tracks of someone who had struck her down and drunk her blood. The t racks disappeared in the hard-packed ice of the road, however, and could lead them nowhere. The little girl was Janny, and Mavin learned of it with a cold horror which turned to fury.
That night in the inn were only murmurings and sideways glances, and more than once Mavin heard this one or that one speaking the Wolf’s name. She expected before the night was over to hear he had been taken into confinement once more, but such was not to be.
He had not left the tavern, they said. He had been in his room drinking with his friends. All night. Never alone, not for a minute. His friends swore to it—Hog Boarfast, and Huggle, the brick-maker’s son, and Hot Haialy, the son of Widow Haialy who had beggared herself trying to help him out of one scrape after the other.
“With them all night, was he???
? murmured Mavin, controlling her voice with some difficulty.
“So they say.”
“Trustworthy men, these? Those who say the Wolf was with them?”
“Well ... there’s no proof not. I mean, who’s to say not?”
“Where did they get to know one another? The Wolf and these f riends of his?”
“By the hundred devils, traveler, how would I know? All of’em w ere born and raised here. Wolf, now, he came more lately, but I don’t keep track of him. Most likely they got to know one another while they were locked up—all of ‘em have been at one time or another. Or over the wine jugs at the Spotted Fustigar.”
Mavin smiled a narrow smile and bought the man a drink. As days wore on, her fury did not abate. In a few days was another killing, and once more the three friends of the Wolf swore he had been with them in the tavern. Mavin had known this child, too—one like Janine, trusting, joyous, kind. The next day Mavin left town with some noise about it, saying she would return in a few day’s time. Instead, she returned that evening in the guise of a wastrel youth who took a room at the Spotted Fustigar and bought drinks for all and sundry in the tavern. It took no time at all to be introduced to Hog, Huggle, and Hot, and when one met them, one met the Wolf.
He had yellow eyes, and a slanted smile. His eyebrows met over his nose, and he had a feral, soft-voiced charm which had the new young barmaid, who was scarcely more than a child herself, b emused and troubled before the evening was half done. Hog, Huggle, and Hot were youths of a type; one fat, one meaty, one lean, but all as ignorant of the world as day-old bunwits and covering that ignorance with noise. Mavin set herself to be agreeable—which no others in that place did—and before much had been drunk or more than a dozen disgusting stories told, Mavin too, was among the Wolf’s close friends. During the fits of lewd laughter, Mavin had looked deep into the faces of the other friends of the Wolf to see the mindless excitements stirring there, gleaming in their eyes like rotten fish on tide flats.
Each day that passed there were fewer people on the streets, each night was closer locked and tighter fastened. The childlike barmaid seemed to stop breathing when the Wolf came near, yet she could not stay far from him. She was always within reach of his hands, always seeking his eyes with an open-lipped fascination. Mavin, watching, made angry, silent comments to herself.
Came an evening the Wolf said, “I’ll be here all night tomorrow, won’t I, Huddle?” He giggled, a high-pitched whine of excitement. “It’s time for a good boozer, eh, Hog, all us good friends together, up in my rooms. Time for hooraw till the cock tries to get up and can’t!”
There was a shifting, eager laughter among the three, in which Mavin joined beneath Wolf’s speculative eyes. “I’ll be back for it,” she gasped from her wastrel’s face, pretending drunken amusement. “Got to go to Fanthooly in the morning, but I’ll be back before dark.”
“What’s of such interest in Fanthooly?” drawled the Wolf, his suspicious eyes burning in his face so that they seemed to whirl like little wheels of fire. The others hung on his words, ready to laugh or strike, as he bid.
“Old aunty with money, Wolf. Every year, money left me by dead daddy. She has it ready for me, same time, every year in Fanthooly.” Mavin appeared too drunk to have invented this, and the four had been drinking at Mavin’s expense for some days, so they laughed and believed, saying they would save a drink for him. Mavin, in her wastrel guise, set off in the direction of Fanthooly the following morning.
Only to return, under cover of the forest, entering Landizot once more at the first fall of dark.
She went to the alleyway behind the Spotted Fustigar. There was a door into an areaway in which the trash could be dumped, and if Mavin had read the signs aright, it was there the young barmaid would come, charmed as a bird is said to be charmed by a serpent. And she came, sneaking out without a lantern, wrapped tight in a thick shawl, face both eager and apprehensive. Mavin took hold of her from behind in a hard, unpleasant way which would leave her with a headache but do no other damage, then dragged her unconscious form into the stables. Shortly, the same shawl was in the areaway once more, wrapped around someone else.
The Wolf came there, as she had known he would.
He did not waste his time with words or kisses. The knife was in his hand when he took hold of her, and it stayed in his hand when she took hold of him.
Mavin had been curious about his eyes. She wanted to know if they would glow in that way if he were afraid, if he were terrified, if he knew he was about to die. She found he could not believe his own death—later she thought that might be why the deaths of so many others had meant nothing to him—so, she tried her voice to see whether she could convince him. After a time she caught the knack of it; by the end of it, the Wolf was truly convinced.
It was Hog who found him later that night, lying in his blood, yellow eyes filmed over and tongue protruding from between his slanted lips, the knife still in his hand.
In the morning, Mavin returned to Landizot as herself, full of tsks and oh-my’s at the Wolf’s sad end. She was questioned about the Wolf’s death, as were others, but there was no proof. A stranger young man had been among the Wolfs friends, and it was thought he might have committed the deed except that he had been seen leaving for Fanthooly earlier that day.
As far as Mavin was concerned, the matter was done with. She could not restore Janine to life, but no other Janine would die. She was no longer angry, and she felt she had repaid whatever hospitality had been shown her.
One of the officials of the town came to Mavin afterward, however, with many suspicious questions and lectures on morality. Mavin was sure Pastor Kyndle had cast suspicion on her because of her views. She was sure of it when the official talked on and on about the Wolf’s demise.
“Why?” he asked, attacking her, apropos of nothing.
“Why was he killed? Why, I suppose because he made a habit of killing others. Surely no one except himself expected him to do it forever?” Mavin asked it as a question, but it seemed only to agitate the man.
“We had no proof he was still killing, perhaps it was someone else who was killing the women.”
“ P erhaps,” Mavin shrugged.
“Whoever killed the Wolf had no right ...” the official began.
“Explain to me again,” asked Mavin, “because I am a stranger. Why was it you could not subject the Wolf to the cruelty of a cage? Why did you not simply kill him the first time? You had proof then.”
“Because he is—was human.”
“Indeed? How did you know that?”
“Why, because his mother was human, and his father.”
“Ah. And is that all humanity is? To be born from others who appear human? What does it mean, humanity?”
“It means,” said the official with some asperity, “that he was born in the ordinary way and therefore had a soul. We cannot subject someone with a soul to cruel or horrible punishment.”
“Ah,” said Mavin, cocking her head in a way she knew to be particularly infuriating. “And the young women and children he killed? Did they also have souls?”
“Of course.”
“And by Landizot’s failure to restrain the Wolf, were they not cruelly treated and horribly punished? Was your town not guilty, therefore, of a grievous and very cruel punishment of the innocent? Ah—I see from your face I have missed some subtlety and fail to understand. Forgive me. I am a stranger and quite stupid.” By this time she was also very angry, for the man had begun to bluster and threaten.
Though she had intended to leave the town at the first thaw, the thaw came while she lingered near Landizot in a cave high upon the dawn wall. The town had acquired a new Wolf. She spent the next season and a half stealing all the children of that town up to the age often or so and carrying them away, far away, to be fostered in desmenes beyond the mountains, over the chasms in the world of the True Game. The people of Landizot were much upset, but they had no proof, so could do nothing. When she had t
aken all the children to the least, newest baby, she enticed the inhabitants i nhabitants of the town out onto the beach, then burned the town behind them, leaving them weeping upon the shore.
She appeared to them then, only that once, in the guise of a terrible, wonderful beast, using the voice she had learned to use in the alley with the Wolf. “I will teach you my teaching, people,” she roared at them. “No man gets a man’s soul by birth alone. That which behaves like a Wolf is a Wolf, no matter who bore him. I have judged you all and found you guilty of foolishness, and this is the punishment, that you shall walk shelterless and childless until you learn better sense.”
After which she left them.
She remembered this now as she stood beside the rail on Topbridge, roiling with the same kind of fury she had felt in Landizot, seething with a hundred ideas for intervention, wondering how much of it she could justify to herself. She had been young then, only eighteen. Even so, she had not been able to excuse having been judge and executioner as a youthful prank. It had not been without consequence. There were still nights when she wakened from a dream of the Landizot children mourning that they would not see their people again. And yet, even so, she still believed they were better in the lands of the True Game, whatever might befall them, than in the town of Landizot beside the ancient sea. At least in the lands of the True Game, people who gambled with women’s lives did not claim to do it out of morality.
In the last several days she had stood in the Birders House more than once, hands resting upon the railing, listening to the voice of Handbright singing. There was no sorrow in that voice, and it was that as much as anything that had stayed Mavin from precipitous action. She had not yet seen Mercald. With Beedie off talking to the Bridger elders, perhaps now would be time to do it, though Mavin dreaded it. When she thought of Handbright and her pregnancy, she could think of it only in terms of the abuses of Danderbat Keep, and her anger envisioned what the man would look like and how she would hate him.