The Blood of Ten Chiefs Read Free Page A

wolves as often as he mingled with the elves, he had seen it when a wolf, old and grizzled and failing, low in the pack, had been set upon by the others and killed. It was the way. It had not bothered him then.
    But now, in this night's dark, this wolf's death would not let him go. When the longtooth's attack had come he had scampered back; he knew he was no match for the maddened predator. The wolves had scattered as well, circling, some limping, but staying out of reach of the larger beast. All had fled—all but one. One wolf, a young male, had gotten caught somehow, had not escaped the deadly rush, had been gored and frightened with pain and caught between the longtooth and its food, and Timmorn and all the wolves had watched, just watched, and the young wolf had growled and snapped its teeth and twisted its body and fought and tried and failed, and the longtooth had torn it and thrown it aside and dragged the black-neck buck into the deep forest. And only after a while did the pack go up and nuzzle the dead wolf. That is the way of it, sensed the half-elf, half-wolf, falling back into the timeless now of wolf thought.
    Except that this time, and for the first time, death bothered Timmorn.
    At the encampment, those who were left behind cared as little for time as did Timmorn or the wolf. They did not think of themselves as the "high ones"; that was a name that the others—the wolf-changed ones like Timmorn and his offspring—were starting to call them. If they were anything in their own minds, they were the firstcomers, the exiles. They felt not at all like a tribe. Loss was their kin.
    In their minds the accident was still fresh, the betrayal that had thrown them broken and confused to this world, even though it had happened many cycles ago. Because they had learned in their own world, before the tragedy, to do without time, to live outside of time if they wished, memories lived within them eternally. And they tried in this new, harsh place to recreate the gentle timelessness they remembered.
    They were doomed, many of them. The world was relentless, and time crowded in upon them, ate at them, made them aware of its uncaring flow. Their bellies complained with hunger, for the physical molds in which they had cast their bodies needed to eat. They shivered and cramped with cold, for their slender and pale forms were suited for a milder, kinder life. As much as they wished it not to be so, life was no longer timeless, but was lived from meal to meal, from fire to windblown fire. Mind and thought could no longer easily exist in that carefree slice of experience that centered between moments-ago and moments-hence. Talking between minds became sluggish and difficult here, and so the firstcomers must string one spoken word after another. Knowledge of other souls became murky; the exiles gave each other and took sounds that were names.
    "Seilein?" The voice was soft, by nature and from tiredness. "Seilein, the fire is going."
    The speaker was very tall, very slender. He was a firstcomer, and he wore about him a skin that ill-concealed the tattering remnants of otherworldly clothing. His name was Renn; he had so far survived this primitive world, and if he did not die of starvation, disease, violence, cold, heat or other fatal discomfort, he might live forever. But now the fire was guttering inside his windbreak-shelter and he did not know how—he did not want to know how—to keep it alight. He watched dully as the fire keeper brought dried twigs and stirred the wood to bring forth a bit more heat.
    "Renn," Seilein said with gentle disapproval, "it's not all that difficult." As she spoke, she removed the fur-lined cap she'd been wearing out in the flurrying snow; she also took off her laboriously stitched gloves and extended her hands toward the fire. The air around her hands shimmered and the flames bloomed for a moment before settling back.
    "All you need to do," she went on, "is to place new wood on the coals now and then.