Wen Spencer - Wolf Who Rules

Much to her surprise, he took her to the wide open field where they had been building the new Viceroy's palace. Oddly, a gossamer was moored here instead of the Faire Grounds. They pulled to the edge of the abandoned project and got out of the Rolls. The entire thirty acres had been covered with sod.

"Why here?" She swung up onto the gray phantom's hood. The wind swept woman of its hood ornament - the spirit of ecstasy-seemed so appropriate for the Wind Clan. She wondered if that was how Windwolf ended up with the Rolls Royces.

"The spell stones represent massive power," Windwolf settled beside her on the hood. "Poppymeadow would probably be annoyed if you lost control of the winds in her orchard."

There was a typical Windwolf answer. Did he sidestep the real question on purpose or was he teasing her with his very dry humor or did they just simply have a fundamental miscommunication problem?

"You're going to teach me how to fly?"

"No." He said slowly. "You will learn how, some day, but not from me, not today."

Her disappointment must have showed, as he actually explained more.

"I have sent for a sepana autanat," Windwolf told her. "But arrangements must be made, and such things take time."

"A what?"

"He trains the clan children in magic." He paused to search out the English word. "A teacher."

"Oh." She had so few teachers in her life that the idea of a total stranger teaching her was unsettling. "Can't you just teach me yourself?"

"I wish I could, but there are things I don't remember of the early lessons. And there were so many silly learning games we played that even now I don't understand why we did them. I suspect that they were to teach focus and control."

"What kind of games?"

He gave an embarrassed smile. "You will laugh." He stood up, squared his shoulders, and closed his eyes. Taking a breath, he raised his hands to his head, and eyes still closed, splayed out his fingers like tree branches waving in a breeze. "Ironwood stand straight and tall." He dropped his hands slightly so his thumbs were now in his ears, and he flapped the hands. "Gossamer flies over all." Hands to nose this time. "Flutist plays upon his pipe. Cook checks to see if fruit is ripe." He touched index fingers together. "Around and around, goes the bee." He spun in place three times. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

He clapped five times and launched into the song again, faster this time, and then again, faster still. Windwolf was right; she had to giggle at him. He was so regally beautiful, yet he purposely used a childish singsong voice as he wiggled his fingers, spun in place, and clapped his hands. After the third round, he collapsed besides her, laughing. "Well, you're supposed to do that faster and faster, until you're too dizzy."

"What is that supposed to teach you?"

"I don't know." He lay back onto the warm hood to watch the clouds roll overhead, considering. "I think-it might have been staying aware where your body is regardless of what you're doing. That is very important in controlling magic. There is much for you to learn, and not all of it has to do with controlling the winds."

She scoffed at that understatement. "I thought I knew a lot about elves, about clans and everything, but I'm finding that I don't know anything at all. Like I didn't know each clan had their own spells."

Windwolf considered her for a moment, sadness gathering at the edges of his eyes. "Yes, there is so very much you need to learn. I suppose some history can not hurt, and probably help make sense of our people."

She had heard one long history lesson from Tooloo, but Tooloo tended to twist things to her own unique way of looking at things. "Yeah, it might help."

"In the beginning all elves were much like humans, as evidenced by the fact that we can still interbreed," Windwolf started. "Perhaps-there is a chance-that the first elves were humans, lost through the gateways from Earth to Elfhome - or maybe humans are the ones that became lost. We were tribes scattered, hither and yon, and in our homelands, we practiced the magic that was strongest. Back then, magic was considered holy, and those that used magic were our priests, and they were the first of the clan leaders."

This was different than what Tooloo had told her, in tone if not in fact.

"I don't understand." Tinker asked. "I thought all magic is the same. It's just a general force harnessed by the mechanics of a spell."

"Yes, and no. The Wind Clan spells have been refined for millennia, but they are based on certain natural properties. The Wind Clan, according to legends, started in the high steppe lands. For countless generations, those free-born tribes used their magic, and were slowly changed by it. That's where the genetic stamp developed that allows you to key to one set of spell stones or another."

"But didn't the Skin Clans gather all those tribes together and force them to be the same?"

"They tried. They would conquer a tribe and do all they could to stamp out its culture. Burning temples. Killing the leaders, the scholars, and the priests. Skin Clan were ruthless masters, but we were not totally helpless. We managed to hide away some of our priests, keep them hidden for centuries. We formed secret societies that evolved into the clans. As slaves all we had to call our own was our life, our honor, and our pledge to protect and to serve. But those were weapons strong enough to overthrow the Skin Clan."

"So - since everything had to be kept secret - ceremonies like weddings were a big no-no?" If so, then her marriage to Windwolf made a lot more sense.

"Yes, we could not afford to be discovered. Simple words, whispered between two people, were all we could trust."

"How did the domana end up ruling?"

"The clan leaders realized that the only way we could win against the Skin Clan was to use their greatest abilities against them. Once the Skin Clan became immortal, they ordered all their bastards killed. We started to hide away healthy babies, offering up stillborn and deformed infants in their place. They were protected by the clan so that they could protect the clan."

Tooloo had told her a version of this, only somehow not as noble, not so desperate. Quick Blade, Windwolf's great-grandfather, had been one of the babies hidden away and died fighting for his adopted clan's freedom.

"After we won the war with the Skin Clan, we suffered a thousand years of war between ourselves. Clan against Clan. Caste against Caste. Elf against Elf. We had lived so long in slavery that we had no idea how to be free. It was the sekasha that held us together - they demanded that the clan structure should be maintained when the other castes would have abandoned it."

"I would have thought it was the domana that would kept the clans intact."

"The other castes feared that we would become cruel monsters like our fathers. The sekasha guards us - from harm and from ourselves. More than one domana has been put down by his own Hand."

"Why did sekasha want the domana in charge instead of just taking power themselves?"

It was as if Windwolf never considered the "why" of it. He frowned and thought for minute. "I am not sure. It is the way they wanted it. Perhaps it was because with the domana's access to the spell stones, the sekashas' choices were limited to putting the domana in power, destroying the stones, or killing all the domana. While they are sekasha first, they are fiercely loyal to their clans. It is their nature to be so. And as such, it would go against their nature to weaken their clan."

"So the spell stones and the domana stayed."

Windwolf nodded. "And we have had what passes as peace for thousands of years - because of the sekasha."

Tinker glanced over to where Pony and Stormsong stood. Close enough to protect. Far enough away to give her and Windwolf a sense of privacy. Who was really in charge? On the surface, it would seem she was - but if she was - why was she stuck with sekasha watching her when she rather be alone?