The wolf. So close now the horses would be stirring in the stalls and the chickens pecking at the wire in the coop. Inigar knew how they felt: uneasy, restive, trapped.
Sucking in icy air, he listened for a response. Every summer since the Hundred Year Cull, bands of Bailsmen rode out along the far borders to hunt pack wolves that ranged too close to the hold. The slain animals were skinned, not butchered. For while no Hailsman ate wolftneat, many enjoyed the pleasure of walking on wolf-pelt rugs. In recent times the cull had grown sparse as packs moved north and west, out of range of Hailish steel. Pack wolves were cautious. They had pups and yearlings to protect, and their collective wisdom gave them an advantage over solitary beasts.
to The animal that howled this night was not part of such a pack though, for nothing but deathly silence returned its call. A lone wolf.
Fear and understanding slowly began to coalesce in Inigar's thoughts. Something terrible was about to happen. Here, in the exact and sacred center of clan. The Hail Wolf had returned home.
Inigar stood perfectly straight and still and decided what he would do. Mist from the guidestone glided across his face yet he did not shrink back or blink. Quite suddenly his greatest mistake was clear to him. It had not been misjudging Mace Blackhail or taking an oath from Raif Sevrance that he knew from the very beginning the boy was doomed to break. No. Grave though those errors were they did not match his failure to train an apprentice guide.
He had wanted Effie Sevrance so badly he'd refused to consider anyone else. She was so powerful, that was the thing, the augers that preceded her birth so potent. And she had been born to the stone. No one in any clan at any time Inigar could remember had been born to the guidestone. Yet that was the girl s lore, and he had coveted its power for his office and himself. Possessiveness had made him blind. Utner candidates had been worthy-Jebb Onnacre, Nitty Hart, Will Sperling-yet he had rejected them out of hand. Now who would guide Blackhail when he was gone? A sound, pitched so low it was almost beyond hearing, pulsed through the guidestone like an eartth tremor. This time Inigar heard it clearly, instantly recognizing the source. The Hailstone. The vast chunk of black granite and blackened silver that had been cut from the great stone fields of Trance Vor seven centuries earlier and floated a thousand miles upstream along the Flow was returning the call of the Hail Wolf.
Ice mist switched violently, sending waves rippling out from the stone. Inigar could smell it now: cold and vast, like the sky on a clear winter night. It was the smell of gods. A part of his brain, made just for this moment, came to life solely to recognize the scent. Tears sprang to his eyes. Here was everything he had ever wanted: to exist in the presence of gods. To regard them and be regarded. To know and to be known.
mnioooooooooooooo…
At his last moment what should a man do? Inigar thought of all he had been and all he had hoped to be … but he would not dwell on his failings. The time for that was done. He thought of clan; of the Shanks and Sevrances, the Blackhails, Murdocks, Ganlows and Lyes. Imperfect men and women, but the sum of the whole was good. He thought of Embeth Hare, the girl who would have wed him if he'd asked. "Inny," she had said to him on that perfect summer day as they lay out on the hay piles, soaking in the sun. "If you decide to become Beardy's apprentice you must never forget two things. It's not enough that we fear the gods. We must love them also." When he had asked her what the second thing was, she had pulled up her skirt and made love to him. His first and only time.
Embeth had always been smarter than him. Wind whipped against his face as ice mist started to rotate around the guidestone. Faster and faster it moved, round and round, blasting tools and smoking embers from its path. The gods were leaving Blackhail. And what sort of gods would it make them if they left quietly without a sound?
No longer able to stand in the hurricane, Inigar dropped to his knees. The air was full of debris now; strips of leather, shammies, ashes, woodchips, and dust. The oak workbench he'd sat at every day slid across the room, legs squealing. A powerful blast of air sent it smashing against the wall. Inigar felt little shards of oak pierce his shoulder. A moment later something punctured his hip. Looking down he saw his chisel poking from the pad of muscle at the top of his thigh. He took its handle in his fist and yanked it out.
An eye was forming above the center of the guidestone. It was beautiful and terrible, a calmness in the storm of spinning clouds. A noise bass and so full of power set the walls and floor vibrating, boomed out of the stone. Inigar's eyes and nose began to bleed. His pigskin cloak was snatched from his back and sucked into the tow. He was beyond feeling pain now, and barely registered the missiles slamming against his side. He was the guide of Clan Blackhail and he had his chisel in his hand, and witnessing the gods' power was not a bad way to die.
Suddenly everything stopped. Litter dropped from the air, thudding and tinkling. Mist sank away like water down a drain. The guidestone stood still and silent, as old as the earth itself. Wonder and sadness filled Inigar's heart. Who would guile Blackhail when he wllgone?
And then the Hailstone exploded into a million bits of shrapnel and the clan guide knew no more.
The man who had lost his soul approached the house. Timbers framing the doorway were black and shiny. Creosote deposited during the burning gave them the oily iridescence of ravens' wings. The door that had once been suspended between them had fallen on the front stoop. Its metal hinge pins had popped out of their casings like cooked sausage meat. Charred panels in the door crumbled as the man's weight came down on them. In a different life he had stained and waxed the panels, proofing them against the brutal winter storms that hit from the north.
Protecting this house from harm.
The man rocked backward, bringing force to bear on the heel of his left boot, crushing the brittle wood, stretching the moment before he entered the house.
and the snow fallen. The curious and opportunistic. Young boys on dares; thieves in search of locked boxes, silverware, metal for scrapping; officials gathering information along with a fine story to tell their wives over supper. The man understood the pull of such places. Death and ruin dwelt here, and a person could come and view it and be glad it was not his family, his house, his life.
Ignoring the footsteps, the man headed down the central hall toward the kitchen. His mind was working; cataloguing details, noting absences, testing them against the theory coalescing in his head. It was the only way to remain sane.
The devil was in the details. The damage to the doors and exterior walls was far greater than in the interior of the house. Here, in the kitchen, the stone fireplace was barely damaged. The fire irons had been stolen, not melted. The facing stones were black, yet the heat had been insufficient to crack the mortar between them. On the opposite wall, where the external door was located, the destruction was far worse. The two windows were black holes. Plaster surrounding them had warped and cracked. Varnish on the adjoining floorboards had blistered. Part of the wall above the eastern window had fallen in taking a chunk of the upper story along with it. The man looked up and saw sky. When he looked down he noticed that one of the house's exterior sandstone blocks had tumbled in. Its once dusty orange face had been smelted into glass.
Xhalia ex nihl. All becomes nothing: words he'd learned from the Sull. They spoke them in times of grief as a comfort… and in times of joy as a reminder. He'd thought them wise and fair. He was wrong.
His wife and daughters were dead. His three girls and the woman he had loved for half his life were gone. Murdered.
The moment he had turned the corner in the road and seen the burned house he knew. He had lived with risk for so long that the anticipation of disaster had become a reflex, a string held at tension waiting to snap. A muscle contracting in his gut had told him everything. The walk through the house had simply confirmed it. The blaze had burned from the outside in. Fires had been set at windows and doors. The occupants had been trapped inside and forced to fill their lungs with hot, lethal smoke.