"A mage, that uninvited guest, black-robed and with a heart like hoar-frost — and you must remember that this is no tale of rival suitors, one come in the very nick of time to rapt away the maiden he loves. This is a tale of two young men, one so poisonously jealous of the other that he must — for hate — spoil whatever his rival in power had.
"The name of the Spoiler? I will not speak it. Let it never be remembered. This is how dwarves reward murderers, and I know no other way as good.
"He laid hands on the girl, that dark mage, in a way no man should touch another's wife; magicked her from sight before any one of us could move to prevent. Aye, but he didn't take her far, in hatred and arrogance took her only within the cottage. In the very instant we knew her gone, we heard her voice raised in terror and rage. Close as she was, the evil mage's wizard ways kept us from coming to her aid until it was too late. The spell lifted. Thorne found her quickly in the bridal chamber. And he saw the mage defile her… and worse.
"Mariel lay cold and still on the ground, like a fragile pretty doll flung aside and broken, Thorne's dear love stricken for spite by the Spoiler.
"Seeing her dead, Thorne Shape-shifter showed the Spoiler how he'd earned his name.
"You have seen the wolf, and so you know what the Spoiler saw in the moments before his death. But you have never heard such screaming as I heard that night: never heard such piteous pleading, nor heard anyone wail for mercy as the Spoiler did, him torn by the fangs of the great gray wolf.
"Tam Potter and I could have tried to stop Thorne, but we did not. We stood by, watched the wolf at his ravening work. We should have granted mercy."
Despite the hot, high fire, Una sat shivering, her hand a small fist in Roulant's.
"Tam died wishing we'd granted that mercy," Guarinn said softly. "And I sit here now wishing no less, for the Spoiler died with a curse on his lips. It was a hard one, as the curses of dying mages tend to be, and it marked us all with the fate of hunter and hunted."
Stiff and cold from sitting, Una got to her feet; she did not answer when Roulant called to her. She needed a place to be private with what she'd learned. The night was crisp and bright, as lovely as it must have been this time thirty years ago. As she walked, Una discovered the shape of the ruin, saw that it was very like the little stone house near the bend of the brook in Dimmin. It lacked only one room to be exactly the same. In the Dimmin house, Thorne kept only a stark sleeping loft under the eaves.
Una stood for a long time before the dark mouth of the little cave of fire-blacked beam and broken stone that had sheltered her tonight; all that was left of a fouled bridal chamber.
She returned to stand by the fire. "Tell me," she said.
"Thorne must surrender his very self one night each year and hope that Roulant or I will end the curse by killing the wolf. This," Guarinn said, "is an inherited obligation."
Una stood quietly, her eyes on the fire, the flames and the embers. "If you kill the wolf, what will happen to Thorne?"
It was Roulant — silent till then — who answered.
"The curse will be over. He'll begin to age, grow old again, like the rest of us. Thorne hasn't got any elven blood, Una, though everyone thinks so. It's the curse that's held him in time."
"Guarinn," she said softly. "Why haven't you killed the wolf in all these thirty years?"
"You'd think it would be easy, aye? Take the first shot as he was changing and end the matter. It isn't so easy. Once before, binding him slowed the change, and we tried that again tonight. But sometimes
…" The dwarf shuddered. "Sometimes he's changed between one breath and the next. Sometimes faster than that, and the wolf is gone before either one of us can pick up a weapon. He doesn't just look like a wolf. He IS one! He'll tear at you, running, and he's too canny to stay around fighting losing battles.
"So," she said. "You have to go out and hunt the wolf?"
Neither answered. A glance passed between them and Roulant got to his feet. He took her hand, his own very cold as he led her into the shadow of a low broken wall.
"Una," he said. "We can kill the wolf if we can find it — "
"That won't be hard tonight. You could track him by the blood."
"We could. Except…" His face shone white in the moonlight, his eyes dark with dread. "Except that we dare not set foot out there!"
She frowned, leaned on the wall to look out. All she saw was night and stars and the moons hanging over the clearing. She heard night noise, owls wondering and hares scampering, a stream laughing over stones.
"I know," Roulant said. "I see everything that you see, just as you see it. When I'm standing here." He turned his back on the forest. "When I set foot outside the ruin — even hold my hand out beyond the wall… It's terrible out there. The Spoiler laid a curse on us too, one we've never found a way past. In here, we're safe. Out there
… they'll kill us."
Una heard this, but she was staring out at the forest and the night, thinking about what he'd said about things being very different beyond the wall. She looked down and saw her loosely clasped hands just beyond the wall. Unlike the others, she neither saw nor felt any curse in the forest or the night.
Una turned away from the wall and walked past Roulant and Guarinn without a word. She picked up Roulant's bow and quiver on the way. She'd not gotten but a few yards when she heard Roulant shout something, heard Guarinn scrambling to his feet, echoing the warning cry. Una ran, heeding no warning. She vaulted the wall where the wolf had fled.
As she bounded down the hill, Una hoped that whatever kept Roulant and Guarinn helpless in the ruin would not affect her. It was frightening enough to go hunting a wounded wolf in the night, and her only a middling shot with a bow. Still, the beast was wounded, and if she could once get a good aim, she'd be able to kill it.
Roulant jumped the wall, chased heedlessly after Una. And he thought: Idiot girl! Guarinn was a long reach behind. He prayed that Roulant would be able to snatch her back to safety in time, that he wouldn't have to follow.
Una was too fast. She vanished into the shadows at the foot of the hill. Roulant stood where he'd landed.
Guarinn eyed the darkness, and Roulant standing outside the wall, straining like a leashed hound. The night would spring alive at any moment, suddenly boiling with horror. The wall would be on them.
Guarinn nervously fingered the haft of his axe. "Roulant, what do you think?"
"I'm going to fetch Una back, that's what I think!"
Guarinn heard Roulant's answer only faintly, for the young man was already at the foot of the hill. Alone in the ruin, Guarinn shifted from foot to foot, indecisively. "This is insane," he muttered. "I know what's going to happen to me if I leave here…"
He took a breath, fueling courage and a suddenly rising hope. Maybe nothing would happen.
Roulant can chase after his girl if that's what he wants to do, Guarinn thought. But I still have my axe and good strong arm, and I'm going for the wolf.
Guarinn hopped the wall. But when his feet hit the ground he found himself on the wrong side of the border between reason and nightmare, caught in the trap the Spoiler had laid for any wolfhunter who ventured out of the ruin.
The wall walked. And the dead with him.
They crawled, and shambled, and dragged themselves staggering through a foul and freezing fog, each trying desperately to reach Guarinn as the damned would grasp at one last hope. He could not move, stood rooted like an oak in the ice-toothed mist, helpless as decaying hands plucked at him, clung to him, shoulder and wrist and arm. And this was no silent place, this nightmare-realm. It was filled up with the mad shrieking and frenzied grieving of people he'd known in life, and some he'd never seen until they were dead.