Heart of the Wolf Read online

  Rina had become her almost constant companion. She was sixteen and already taller than the petite Jocelyn, who quickly discovered that the Kassid were indeed a very tall race. Rina had big brown eyes flecked with gold, deep-set like her father's, and a mass of chestnut curls that Jocelyn assumed must have come from her mother. She was pretty, bright, and very inquisitive—and she spoke excellent, if heavily accented, Ertrian.

  Rina asked many questions about Jocelyn’s life

  and the Ertrian court, and Jocelyn answered them all candidly, hoping that this would be reciprocated when she asked Rina questions about the Kassid.

  She explained that she would become empress only because of her only brother's death and that the usual role of royal daughters was to make important marriages and bear more royal children. She didn’t bother to hide her disgust with this state of affairs.

  Rina was aghast, unable to believe that people could be forced into marriage for reasons other than love. She asked how Jocelyn had managed to escape such a horrible fate.

  "I might not have,” Jocelyn admitted, “except that by the time I was of marriageable age, my brother had died and I had become the heir." She added that her father was disinclined to force her into marriage, having himself been fortunate enough to have married for love.

  "He told me once that being emperor was difficult enough without also having to live in a loveless marriage.”

  “So now you can marry for love?” Rina asked. "You will marry, won’t you, since you'll have to have an heir yourself?”

  Jocelyn shook her head. “No, I have no intention of marrying, because I refuse to let a man rule in my place. And that is exactly what would happen. He wouldn’t truly be the emperor, of course, but it would be to him that everyone would turn, not to me.

  “As for having an heir, I have cousins who are busy having babies. When I see how they turn out,

  I will simply adopt one of them as my heir. It happened once before many years ago, when an emperor had no sons of his own.”

  “So your father could have done that, too?” Jocelyn nodded. ‘‘He could have—but he didn’t. He said that I am more fit to rule than any of my cousins—and he’s right.”

  When Jocelyn began to ply Rina with questions as well, the girl at first seemed to speak freely. She confirmed that Daken had said earlier about their manner of choosing a leader.

  “It seems very strange to me," Jocelyn said, shaking her head. “How can people be trusted to elect the best leader? Surely there must be unscrupulous people who would bribe others to vote for them?” Rina looked shocked. “Oh no! That would never happen. We are all taught in school the traditions of our people and the importance of electing a good leader.”

  “Do all children go to school, then, not just the children of the wealthy?” Jocelyn asked.

  "Of course,” Rina responded, apparently surprised that she should think otherwise. "We don’t really have wealthy people here, Jocelyn. Some have more than others, but no one is rich the way your nobles are rich. And no one is as poor as your peasants."

  How could that be? Jocelyn wondered, then began to understand as Rina told her that no one owned land. The Kassid believed that all of the Dark Mountains belonged to all of them, not to any one individual, and that the only way anyone acquired more wealth than his neighbors was by possessing

  some talent in abundance or by working very hard at something deemed to be difficult by the tribe as a whole, such as mining.

  Jocelyn decided that she needed some time to think about this strangeness, and turned instead to the role of women in their society, a subject she’d found fascinating ever since she’d learned from Da- ken that women too voted for the leader and even served as his advisors.

  "Do you think a woman could be elected leader of your people?" She asked Rina.

  Rina shook her head—a bit angrily, Jocelyn thought. "Not unless certain things change. There are ... requirements, you see, and women can't meet them now. But Father thinks that should change."

  "What are the requirements?” Jocelyn asked. Da- ken hadn’t mentioned any.

  Rina hesitated and Jocelyn had the impression that she was struggling with a desire to divulge something she'd been told not to talk about. She was wondering how she could encourage the girl when Tassa joined them. Something in the girl’s expression suggested that the matter should be dropped. But when Jocelyn attempted to pursue it later, after Tassa had gone, Rina changed the subject with all the adroitness of the born diplomat.

  Not wishing to antagonize the girl or to get her into trouble, Jocelyn did not press for a response. But she wondered if the answer could lie in their sorcery. Was it possible that only men possessed the means to make magic?

  Certainly it seemed to her that Rina and Tassa

  and the few other women she’d met thus far possessed no magic. Daken, on the other hand, she could not so easily dismiss. There was something about him, something that defied description— something she felt at a deep, unknowable level. And to a lesser extent, she felt it also with Jakka, the young man Daken had designated as his successor and the only other Kassid male she’d truly met, though she saw others from time to time.

  She feared Daken, although he had never given her cause to do so—and she was certain that fear came from a deep, instinctive knowledge that he did indeed possess magic, even if he chose not to use it in her presence.

  One day when all three women were gathered, Tassa was struggling with her limited Ertrian and voiced her regret that she had not kept up her skill in Jocelyn's tongue. That prompted Jocelyn to inquire why they studied Ertrian in the first place.

  "We all learn it in school,” Rina answered. "But unless we use it after that, like Father does, it’s hard to remember it.”

  "But when does your father use it?" Jocelyn asked.

  The two women exchanged glances, and Tassa immediately turned back to explaining about the knitting of the beautiful wool Jocelyn had admired. She’d already explained that the wool came from animals that resembled goats more than they did sheep.

  Once again, Jocelyn did not press for answers, certain that if she became too insistent, she would

  learn even less—and perhaps provoke Daken's wrath.

  But the questions were piling up in her mind. To whom would Daken speak Ertrian? She already suspected that the Kassid were sending out their own spies, but if that were so, they were the ones who would have to speak fluent Ertrian, not Daken.

  And if the Kassid were content in their mountains, why would they bother sending out spies in the first place? Surely they couldn’t believe anyone would dare to attack them here.

  Furthermore, why was Daken continuing to avoid any serious discussions with her? She’d now been here for nearly two weeks, and other than an occasional spell of tiredness, she was fully recovered.

  Her status in this strange place seemed so tenuous, so very fragile. She was treated with utmost respect and kindness by everyone she encountered—including, of course, Daken himself. But she continued to feel as though she were walking a very fine line in this place and that one misstep could plunge her into a very different world, one she couldn’t imagine and didn’t want to imagine.

  For this reason, she temporized, making no demands upon Daken. It seemed important to stay with the rules of diplomacy, which stated that the host should be the one to raise the business at hand. But she had no reason to believe that an isolated people like the Kassid would recognize those protocols.

  Although she saw little of him, Daken occupied

  a very large role in her thoughts—which she told herself was only natural, given the fact that it was he whom she would have to persuade to form an alliance with Ertria.

  But she was uneasily aware of the fact that he would have been in her thoughts regardless of his position.

  He didn’t behave like any ruler she’d ever met or even imagined. He displayed none of the usual trappings of power. He dressed like everyone else, and she’d discovered th
at his suite in the fortress, while apparently somewhat larger than others, was no more luxurious. There were no servants or courtiers hanging about, and she’d even found him in the kitchen once, preparing his own breakfast.

  She’d even had a few occasions to observe him with his men, and she’d been shocked at his behavior. Anytime she was present, he insisted that everyone speak Ertrian, which she assumed was intended to reassure her that no one was plotting against her. On these occasions, she'd heard him use phrases like "Perhaps you should .. .’’ or “Well, we might want to .. ." instead of simply issuing orders as her father—or she herself—would have done.

  If he weren’t who he is, she thought, he would certainly be thought weak when he talks like that. And yet the others clearly respected him, even though that respect wasn’t accompanied by the usual bowing and scraping to which she’d long since become accustomed.

  Daken, quite simply, fascinated her in a way no man had ever done. When they were together, she

  felt his presence so keenly that she often forgot there was anyone else there. And even when he was absent, which was most of the time, something of him lingered in the suite. Jocelyn had once been awed by the aura of power that had hovered about her father before his illness, but she knew now that she was truly seeing power for the first time.

  He’s a sorcerer, she thought with an inward shudder. And perhaps she’d misunderstood sorcery. Perhaps it wasn’t flashes of light and puffs of smoke and illusions. Perhaps his magic was more subtle.

  And she never looked into those pale blue eyes without being reminded of that wolf—and of the wolf that might be contained within this man as well.

  When Jocelyn’s fever had not returned for three days in a row, Tassa and the old woman healer who had attended her declared that she could venture outside if the weather permitted.

  The days had in fact been quite sunny and everyone was remarking about the unusual warmth, but when Jocelyn at last ventured out into the great courtyard, she quickly realized that what the Kassid described as "warmth” was in fact about as cold as it ever got at home.

  Rina accompanied her as they walked out into the courtyard to attend the thrice-weekly market she had seen from her windows—and it was then that she began to grasp the true dimensions of the Kassid fortress.

  She'd seen enough of the interior to know that it was huge, but as they walked out into the center of

  the courtyard and Jocelyn turned to stare back at it, she was astounded. Even from this vantage point, she couldn’t see all of it.

  The great fortress was built entirely of that strange black stone and was quite literally carved out of the mountain itself. And there were windows everywhere. She stared at it in silent astonishment. How could such a thing have been built? Its very existence was the strongest evidence she’d yet seen for the Kassid's possession of magic.

  "When was this built?" she asked Rina when she could tear her eyes away from it for a moment.

  "We believe that it was a gift from the Old Gods," Rina told her, “A gift they gave the Kassid when they left this world.”

  "And the glass windows?” Jocelyn asked. "Have they always been there as well?”

  "Yes, although some have been replaced over the years. The making of them is a precious skill, passed down in one family.”

  Then Rina pointed to one protruding comer of the fortress, where sunlight glared on a huge expanse of glass that had just caught Jocelyn’s attention.

  “See all those windows up there? That is our winter garden. We grow herbs and vegetables and some flowers in there.”

  Jocelyn marveled anew at the idea of an indoor garden. At the palace there was a small protected courtyard where some flowers and herbs could be grown through much of the winter, but even in Ertria’s much milder climate, they often died.

  They continued to walk about the courtyard and

  presently came to a section Jocelyn hadn’t seen from inside. She stopped and stared. Before her was the entrance to the fortress. A wooden bridge, wide enough for two horses to walk abreast comfortably, stretched across a ravine. Huge ropes, thicker than her waist, angled down from somewhere high in the fortress itself to the far side of the bridge. And on the near end of the bridge were two giant stone urns. Flames leapt up many feet from both of them and she realized that they must be the lights she had seen through the snowstorm the night Daken had brought her here.

  "The bridge can be pulled up if necessary,” Rina explained, "by using those ropes. It makes a terrible noise. Father says no one could ever attack us here with the bridge drawn up, but of course the only time they pull it up is to test it.”

  Jocelyn, who had always thought the palace to be very safe on the hill behind its walls, suddenly felt her home to be very vulnerable by comparison to this place.

  "Do those fires bum all the time?" she asked.

  Rina nodded. "There are pipes running into the bottoms of the urns.”

  "I don't understand,” Jocelyn frowned. "What is in the pipes?"

  Rina hesitated and Jocelyn wondered if she’d asked another indelicate question. But the girl held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “I don’t think there’s a word for it in your language. We call it bol. It’s a smelly black liquid that comes out of the mountain, and it bums.”

  Jocelyn stared at the flames, thinking about the

  heat that poured from the grates in the walls. Could this bol be the source of that, too? She turned to Rina as she began to ask the question—and found herself staring instead into Daken’s pale blue eyes.

  “Bol is the magic that heats our rooms,” he confirmed with a smile and a wry emphasis on the word ‘magic.’ "There are furnaces throughout the fortress and it is piped into them as it is into the urns."

  "And this has always been there, too?” she asked, having just about exhausted her capacity for amazement.

  "Yes. As Rina has probably told you, our home was a gift from the gods when they departed this world. A very generous gift."

  "I am .. . astounded,” she admitted. "This place is not at all what I expected it to be."

  He laughed. "And you have yet to see all of it.”

  "I'm not sure I could stand any more surprises," she admitted with a rueful smile.

  “Then we will wait.”

  "Rina said that not all of your people live here. Do the others live in similar fortresses?”

  "Similar—but much smaller. And some live in separate houses during the summer months, to tend their crops and livestock."

  Rina took Jocelyn’s arm impatiently. "Come, Jocelyn. We must hurry if we are to get to market while the selections are good.”

  Rather reluctantly, Jocelyn allowed Rina to lead her away. She had very much wanted to go to the market—until Daken happened along.

  But to her surprise—and apparently to Rina’s as

  well—he followed them. Rina threw him an astonished look.

  “You're coming to market?”

  He nodded and his wide mouth quirked with amusement. "And that means you won’t be able to flirt with all the boys.”

  Rina rolled her eyes and her fair skin flushed brightly. She spoke in rapid, obviously exasperated Kassid. Daken reminded her to speak Ertrian before their guest, and Jocelyn laughed.

  "It isn’t necessary. Some things don’t require translation."

  Jocelyn found the relationship between father and daughter intriguing. Like Rina, she had also lost her mother at a young age and consequently had been very close to her father. But as she watched the two of them, it struck her that her father's attitude toward her had been one of affection and indulgence, while Daken had often displayed a great interest in every aspect of his daughter’s life and showed great patience in listening to her complaints and dreams and plans.

  As they moved among the many stalls, Jocelyn quickly saw that she herself had become a major attraction at the market. People stared at her with unconcealed curiosity, but nowhere did she encounter an
y hostility.

  There were a surprising number of men at the market, something she’d noticed before as she’d watched from her window. Many of them, she observed, had been relegated to a baby-minding function as their wives selected merchandise, and seeing these big men display such an open, honest

  affection toward their children fascinated her. Apparently, Rina’s motherless status wasn’t the only reason her father took such an interest in her.

  She felt, as she always did in the presence of the men, that vague uneasiness, that deep certainty that these were not ordinary men. But even among the women she saw a difference as well. They had a calm self-confidence and displayed none of the behavior Jocelyn was accustomed to seeing in women when men were present.

  As always, she was aware of Daken’s presence. People spoke to him familiarly, greeting him as a friend and neighbor, not as a ruler, and no one stepped aside to make way for him.

  She lost her awareness of him only when they came to a stall where the sparkle of gold and silver and precious gems caught her eye. Jocelyn had two weaknesses—unusual jewelry and perfumes. And the jewelry she saw displayed here was exquisite. Some stones she recognized, but others were unfamiliar to her, and the workmanship was superior to anything she’d ever seen.

  The man and woman behind the stall were clearly pleased with her interest, although she had to communicate with them through Rina.

  “Would you like something?’’ Rina asked her.

  “Oh yes—but I have no way to pay for them."

  "Then Father can just—"

  “No, please, Rina, that would be—”

  But Rina was already off to find Daken, who stood only a short distance away. Jocelyn stood there uncomfortably as Rina pointed out the two bracelets Jocelyn had admired most. Daken picked them up, then took her gloved hand and slid them onto her wrist.