Requiem for the Wolf Read online

  Requiem for the Wolf

  Tales from the Tiarna Beo

  Tara Saunders

  StormChild Books

  Contents

  Untitled

  Prologue

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  For my children

  Requiem for the Wolf

  By Tara Saunders

  Prologue

  The dead have no interest in clean floors.

  Floors matter plenty to the living. Especially to Da, who’d threaten to tan Murra's hide if he couldn’t eat bacon and eggs off theirs once he came home from slopping the pigs.

  All piss and vinegar, Da. He threatened; Ma was the one who did the whipping. Just one more thing turned upside down now Ma was gone.

  Murra dragged the bucket from its place in the scullery. She wouldn’t risk an upset over so small a thing. Their family had known enough trouble to last ten lifetimes.

  On Dorchadas Eve they stood dark-night watch in their cider-scented kitchen with no instinct that it would be their last. Ailbhe, curled in her snug of blankets by the hearthfire. Paurig, demanding a man’s share of the watch and standing it with his eyes full closed. Da, who stood Paurig’s watch while that man-child snored and never said a word about it later. Ma, who kept plates overflowing and mugs filled, and who sat her own watch besides. And Murra herself, dragging through the festival all forlorn because she’d prefer to watch for boys than for sneaky Fiach.

  If Ma had guessed what was to come, she would have lifted her heels for home with no talk of courage or doing right when the men from Inish came. Then the floors would be clean, the taybread would have enough ginger in it, and Da would smoke his pipe by the fire instead of floating lost through empty stables and a kitchen cold as winter without Ma.

  Why did the Faith Eaters spend their breath talking about the North, instead of what was really important?

  Paurig should be bending his back in the fields instead of stretching his long legs along a road somewhere, the bitter shape of his parting scalded into the walls of home. It hurt not to know whether that new shirt chafed his neck, or whether he was still breathing.

  If Ma was here Murra wouldn’t have to wonder, in the long hours of night, whether her brother ran towards darkness or away.

  Listlessly, she swished her mop into the space where the dresser didn’t fit quite snug against the wall. It wasn’t so long since Da found a curl of dust-fluff twisted around the dresser's leg. His roar that time was loud enough to wake Ma's new neighbours in the boneyard.

  Ma would have expected better, he had shouted, his face wet. And he had disappeared all day and half the night, until Ailbhe whimpered in her sleep and Paurig haunted the lower path, sure that Da had left them just like Ma had. Even the raven that watched from the oak tree shuffled dusty wing-feathers and quorked its concern.

  Ma didn’t choose to be murdered, but the fist in Murra's belly blamed her all the same. Girls of fifteen should have bonnets done up in ribbons, not cloth caps tricked out with cobwebs. There should be blushing lads leaned three deep over the kitchen's door, each one tongue-tied by her beauty.

  Instead there was Ailbhe. Silent enough, aye, since rough hands had ripped her from Ma and made her witness what came after. Ailbhe, who hadn’t spoken a word in three days, not since the new-made military had come to take their horses.

  Horses aren’t for your kind, he had said, Cian ó Ciarbre, his face puckered with the stink of something rotten. As though they had never twirled together to fiddle and pipe, had never met later by the fence line where there were no parents to see.

  But that was before, back when there was no talk of a new army, or of her kind.

  Murra would have set him straight on a thing or two if his eyes had been less cold. If he hadn’t drawn back from her like a town girl from a maggoting rat.

  A good thing the military took their horses, as it turned out. Otherwise Paurig would have left on Bumper instead of his own two feet. Where would any of them be if their neighbours caught him on a horse's back? With another box to bury is where.

  Although it might still come to that. Her kind needed papers to travel more than half a day from Inish, where they were registered. Cian had said that, too. There had been more, but Murra had lost the trick of listening when she lost her Ma.

  Paurig was the one who had showed her how to find Bliss, back when a girl's worst worry was a torn frock at Bealtaine fair. Be careful, he warned her, if you take too much they’ll feel you and they’ll come. He had turned sneaky when she asked where he learned it. So many of his friends and hers whispered in corners these days.

  Nothing was straightforward for the Daoine, now that the Brotherhood decimated them from outside and the Eolaí from within. Murra had no way to tell whether a person she had known a lifetime flirted with the oldest ways, like she did, or informed on those who did. Now was not the time for trusting.

  Such a simple thing to reach inside herself for Bliss, and with it freedom from the burdens of an adult that dragged her shoulders down. In Ma's own kitchen, with the raven watching black-eyed through the window, it bubbled inside her, whispering secrets she could feel instead of hear. Nothing felt more natural than to step inside it and draw it deep.

  It scorched through her, Bliss, stroking every nerve with velvet fingers as it passed. A distillation of herself, bright as flame and pure as summer rain. Murra sighed until she thought her lungs would empty. Oh, the truth in that hungry spark. The burning.

  Inside the brightness something stirred.

  Maybe this time she would slip sideways through the fire and wrap herself around whatever moved in there. Change, and be lost. Change, and be saved.

  "Murra!"

  Da. He'd kill her.

  Murra released her hold on Bliss. It didn't want to let her go, grazing bolts of sensation outwards from the pit of her stomach. Up, to her heart. Down, to her groin. Finally, reluctantly, it leaked away.

  Murra was Murra again. The sorrow of it stole her breath.

  Da crossed the kitchen in three strides, not stopping to scrape his boots, tracking pig-muck onto the flagstones Ma had scrubbed every morning on her knees. He reached for Murra, raised a square brown hand and cracked it hard across her cheek.

  She flew sideways. The dresser met her ribs with a crunch and she cried out for her Da.

  “Filthy hussy! To do that in my own house. In your own Ma’s kitchen!” Da’s breath came in ragged gulps.

  Murra slid downwards along the dresser’s smooth wood. Fine bone cups--Ma’s pride and joy--chimed her to the floor.

  “Abomination. After everything, what happened to your Ma, don’t you dare Fall!” Da planted his feet wide, his face distorting her pain like the curved bottom of a stew pot. Over and over he flexed his hands, but each time they tightened themselves back into fists.

  Fallen. A dirty word whispered behind cupped hands. A frightened word; a coward�
��s word. Was this why Paurig walked away?

  Da’s hair was more grey than black now, Murra noticed. Creases bracketed his mouth and seamed his forehead. Her Da was an old man.

  “Da. Nothing’s like it used to be.” Murra’s words had the bared bones of truth in them, but how to make Da see it from the floor?

  Anger seeped into his face, setting the lines more deeply, to his very soul. “No. The Lady hasn’t changed. Be faithful, She told us, and keep our heads held low. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

  Murra felt something break inside her. The Lady, the Faith Eaters the Eolaí--all shackles from the past. Each just one more yoke to keep them placid while the humans destroyed them strip by strip. “Faithful to what, Da? The oldest ways are our best hope. Without them we’re dying.”

  “It’s you that’s killing us, you and those like you, breaking faith with what we promised and bringing the Brotherhood to our door. How could you do that to your sister?”

  “Me?” Murra screeched. It felt wrong to raise her voice in Ma’s kitchen. “It’s not me that steals what’s ours and treats us like we’re animals. Was it me that dragged Ma into the street? Was it me that made our Ailbhe watch while they kicked her to death and strung up what was left?”

  “Stop.” Da dropped to his knees, stretching a begging hand towards her.

  “Not this time.” Her decision was made. “Not any more.”

  Murra threw herself wide and allowed Bliss to pour in. She shivered at the heat that blazed through her and from her. The soft hairs on her body pulled themselves upright. Her skin prickled and stretched, glorying in the hugeness that forced itself outwards from her shifting bones.

  “No!” Da lunged towards her; past her. He was a pale thing, his importance shaken loose along with the threads of her old life.

  At the heart of the flame something Other bloomed. Its whisper called to her, twined promises around her, drew her close.

  Breath slid from her and was replaced by Bliss. Murra would never again be the small person who watched others take what was hers and did nothing.

  But Da was there too, and something else. Something cold around her throat. Murra choked. A new aching built in her chest, gasping for air. What came was breath, not Bliss.

  Empty. Ashes and stone. She felt nothing inside but rawness where she had been whole. Murra knelt, amputated.

  “I’m glad they killed her.” Da heaved the violent, shuddering sobs of a man who didn’t cry. “It would have broken her heart to see you Fall.”

  “What did you do to me?” Murra clawed at the metal that smothered her throat, her touch finding unfamiliar whorls and chevrons that bit her fingers with icy cold.

  “Didn’t they tell you about the Namhaid Collar when they were whispering their filth in your ears? It’s our share of the duty, passed down from the Dawntime to deal with the likes of you.” Da slammed the dresser drawer shut with a crack. One of Ma’s cups chinked from its hook to shatter on the flagstones.

  “Get it off me, Da. Please. I’ll be good.” The metal under Murra’s scrabbling fingernails was as cold as the cinches that sealed her mother’s coffin. Cold and hard and final.

  Da shook his head. “No way out of a Collar but the grave. This is it for us, Murra love.”

  “You can’t, Da.” She didn’t understand yet.

  “I have to. For Ailbhe. She’s all that’s left.” Da nodded to himself and scrubbed a cuff across his nose, his back straightening. “I’ll take us North. Your Uncle Rhoddi’s been at me to go, but I couldn’t leave your Ma--“

  He turned his head to the window. On the fencepost the raven met his eyes and quorked. It stretched its wings and launched itself, flapping lazily northward. Da nodded.

  “For Ailbhe. I’ll do it for her.”

  Murra sagged against her Ma’s dresser. Fallen. No place for her among their people now, old ways or new.

  FORTY YEARS LATER

  1

  Breag could feel eyes on him.

  He scanned the ragged clifftops to his left and right. He hadn’t expected this here, not so far from anywhere that mattered.

  Three long days of walking since he’d seen another traveller, and that a farmer who had scuttled past with his head down and his eyes glued to the track. In the mountains, where hulks of limestone narrowed the path to a twist of ribbon, curiosity was a dangerous thing. Nobody took these old trails any more, not when the Brotherhood encouraged citizens to use the King’s Road and communicated their wishes by such brutally direct means.

  The watcher was a bandit, he hoped. A misguided human with robbery and murder on his mind.

  The feather-tickle of sensation between Breag’s shoulderblades changed the complexion of the game. A sparkle of awareness stroked along his body to the tip of each hair, the curve of each toenail. No mistaking the crawl of it on his skin. Bliss.

  That feeling meant Breag’s watcher was Lost and not human, bandit or otherwise. This was one of his people, the Daoine. A Fallen, who had turned its back on everything they believed in and chosen the darkened path. The Fiacal Knife would not bring this Lost One home alive.

  Breag slid his left hand across his body to twist the blade free from its sheath on his hip. He scanned the mountain’s threadbare slopes, hungry for confirmation. The webbed-finger touch of Bliss should be enough, but it disturbed him to rely on it.

  On each ridge, splinters of rock forced their way through ragged scabs of land, throwing shadow enough to hide many sets of hungry eyes. The air hung silent and heavy; even the birds hushed under the acrid tang of trouble.

  He caught a flicker at the edge of his vision. It was hard to see what moved in the tangled shadows of grey on grey and dark on dark. Breag’s jaw gritted in frustration.

  “Show yourself.” His shout died on the mountain’s bones.

  A slide of small stones hissed behind him. Breag pivoted, leading with the knife.

  Something moved by a cairn of rock high above the trail, where scrub grass and the occasional stunted hawthorn picked up the late-season sun. Another ripple of small stones slithered downwards.

  Slowly the Lost One stood, its massive shoulders flexing. It had a wolf’s shape but stood twice again as big, and had something very different watching from behind its eyes. Its fangs were too white, its tongue too red to come from nature. For a long, frozen moment it met Breag’s eyes, hunter to hunter.

  The Lost One braced its paws against the base of the rock and snarled, stripping canines long as his hand. It lunged forward, only the sheer drop preventing it from throwing itself at him. Breag snarled back. He scanned the ridge, finding no quick path upwards.

  A bow. The thought was worn smooth from long use. Why could they not have given him a bow?

  The Lost One roared again and drew back into shadow.

  Breag watched for it along the cliff’s edge, his blood pumping hot and eager. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the returning patterns of birdsong. The sensation of Bliss faded.

  Breag cursed the time it took him to clamber up the ridge. The mountainside sloped unforgivingly upwards, sheered into cliff face in places. Exposed rock tore his hands and bit his knees.

  He found nothing by the cairn of rock except for a claw-tipped pawprint large as a soup plate. There was another in the earth nearby, where a dry gully curved downwards to the southeast. The Lost One was long gone.

  Only in these brief, raw moments did Breag allow his fist to loose the throat of hope. No keeping his promise with this one, not even if he could catch it. A Lost One addicted to Bliss wouldn’t survive the knife, which meant he couldn’t take it home for judgement. Breag had tried, and tried again.

  A quest with no ending, this. No way to recognise a Lost One until it sank into Bliss, and when it did no use in it for him. His journey was a fool’s errand and he the fool.

  Breag hefted the pack onto his shoulder and followed the Lost One’s tracks into the gully.

  * * *

  The town circled around the mountain’
s foot like a hound curled against a snowstorm. Breag followed a cart-track that slipped through narrow streets painted green with a mildew of neglect. This sorry place huddled a long way from the King’s Road; it roasted on the twin prongs of the Brotherhood’s displeasure and the need to protect itself from the North unaided.

  Breag stopped under the uneven signpost that announced the town was named Dealgan, and lowered his pack to the ground between his boots. Time to consider his options. The Lost One he’d tracked here was useless to him, but one might lead him to others. All was not lost.

  A chink of metal caught his ear, and Breag’s body bent to his pack before his mind could pull it back. Links of blackened iron hissed through his fingers, snagging on a knotwork pendant and on bruise-dark memories of all that had been taken from him.

  Memories too murky for the hours of daylight. Breag pushed them down with all the others that bled his nights dry of sleep. He slipped the pendant between folds of wear-softened cotton and straightened. Time to follow the spoor this Lost One waved so determinedly under his nostrils.

  If he was to stay here then he would need to find a bunk. Only a man in love with death slept under the stars when he travelled off the King’s Road, and Breag had decided against death.

  For today.

  * * *

  Through shop-fronts and from behind wagons the people of Dealgan watched him, their eyes skittering away before he could catch them with his own. He was a stranger, and he travelled from the North.

  Breag’s lip curled at the irony. Since the Purging forty years before, every man moving through the Tiarna from north to south came fear-tainted with the stink of Daoine. If these fine citizens had hated more discerningly, he might have trapped his Lost One years back.

  First to turn his head from the stranger was a ragged man who lounged under the slant of the grocer’s eaves. His flat cap lay in the dirt by his side, and he supped from a flask without bothering to disguise it. A perfect figurehead for this festering town.