Marsheila Rockwell - Legacy of the Wolves

Andri wanted desperately to believe her, to accept the forgiveness she was offering. But watching Quillion-Rave-die by his hand, and change from a murdering, tormented lycanthrope to a tired old shifter, right at his feet … it struck too close to home. It was like watching his parents die all over again, a sin for which there was no remission.

“Favor or not, you just killed our only suspect, before we even had a chance to question him,” Greddark pointed out with a frown.

Irulan shook her head. “It wasn’t him. Look at his legs. There’s no wound like the one Zoden described.”

Both Andri and Greddark looked where she indicated. Though the shifter’s corpse still bore the evidence of Andri’s blow, there was no other mark on him.

“So that means there’s another lycanthrope out there?” the dwarf asked, aghast. “Aren’t those things supposed to be rare? Especially in Thrane?”

“More than one, I think,” Irulan replied. “Quillion mentioned a pack, hiding in ‘the forest that burned.’ I think he may have meant the Greensward.”

“What?” Greddark said, grabbing for his sword, his eyes darting to the surrounding trees.

“No. He didn’t mean the Greensward,” Andri said, closing his eyes against the pain of memory, and realization. Would he never be free of his father? “He meant the Burnt Wood.”

“How do you know that?” Greddark asked, his voice sharp with curiosity. Or suspicion.

Andri opened his eyes to look from Irulan to the dwarf, and back again.

“Because,” he said at last, “That’s where my father went to hunt a werewolf five years ago. Right before he turned into one himself.”

“I think you better tell us the whole story,” Greddark said, his hand still hovering near his hilt.

Andri nodded. They deserved to know the truth. “Can we do it somewhere else?”

“Back to the pond?”

“That’s fine.”

Andri stood and retrieved his sword from where he had thrown it. In the moonlight, the black blood looked like tarnish on the silver blade. Shoving the thought aside, he wiped the sword clean on a patch of dead grass and sheathed it.

When he turned back, Irulan still knelt beside her great-grandfather’s body. Andri swallowed the lump sticking in his throat and walked over to her.

“Do you want me to give him last rites?” he asked as gently as he could.

Irulan shook her head without bothering to look at him. Perhaps because she couldn’t stand to.

“Rave never embraced the Silver Flame the way Bennin did. They say he always blamed the Church for his father’s death. Besides”-she glanced up at him at last-“you already gave him the only absolution he would have wanted.”

Greddark started trying to cover Rave’s body with brush, to make an impromptu cairn, but Irulan told him not to bother. The rats would find him when his absence eroded their fear of the place, and they would return his body to the earth. It was the way.

As they led the horses back to the dried up pond in silence, Andri prayed for the strength to tell his tale. He’d only recounted it twice before-once in the immediate aftermath of the murders, and once to the Keeper. Though only a child, the depth of Jaela Daran’s compassion had utterly disarmed him. While she had held his much larger hands in her own, he had wept for his loss for the first and only time.

The embers of their fire were still warm, and Greddark had a new blaze going in a matter of moments. They sat around the campfire, the dwarf watching him expectantly while Irulan stared into the flames, lost in her own thoughts.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Andri nodded. He took a deep, fortifying breath, made the sign of the Flame, and began his tale.

“It was 993 YK. My father, Alestair, had just returned from a successful hunt in the Burnt Wood. He even brought me the claws of the werewolf he’d slain.” Andri reached up to touch the necklace he wore, his fingers running lightly along the chain, touching each claw in turn before closing around the silver holy symbol they framed. “He’d been scratched by the lycanthrope but took belladonna immediately and was sure he’d escaped infection.”

As Andri looked into the dancing orange flames, he could see his father’s confident expression and hear the pyromancer’s laugh as he dismissed Andri’s fears, as clearly as if the paladin were once again in the room with his parents. Of course, he hadn’t been a paladin then. He hadn’t learned of Cardinal Brynde’s decision until the following week. The same day that he learned that his father’s certainty had been misplaced.

“Nine days later, on the night of the next full moon, we found out he was wrong.…”

Wir, Lharvion 18, 993 YK

… Andri walked out of the Cardinal’s chambers as calmly as he could, nodding to the beaming secretary as he passed, but once he was out in the hall, he couldn’t contain his joy any longer.

With a whoop that earned him startled glances from several passers-by, Andri took off at a run for his parents’ quarters-he couldn’t wait to tell them. They lived on the third floor of the aptly-named Tower of St. Valtros. The saint had been the first paladin called to serve the Silver Flame, an honorable tradition that Andri had been deemed worthy to continue.

He’d made it! After four hard years of study, he’d passed his final tests at the Psalm of the Flame Seminary, and tonight Cardinal Brynde had informed him that he was being accepted into the Order of Templars on Victory Day, just three weeks hence. He was going to be a paladin!

He knew his mother would be a little disappointed. As a high-ranking priestess in the Order of Ministers, she had hoped her only child would follow in her footsteps and become a priest. But his Uncle Ajiuss, a Templar himself, would be bursting with pride, and his father would be utterly ecstatic. Andri couldn’t wait to see Alestair’s face when he told him the news!

He took the servants’ corridors, and his pace brought him to the west-facing tower within minutes, though he had to dodge a group of maids, nearly upsetting their laundry cart. But even their angry recriminations could not dampen his mood.

He had done it! He didn’t think he’d ever been happier or more proud than he was at this moment. He bounded up the stairs as if he wore boots of jumping.

Andri was in such a hurry, he almost stumbled across something long and hard lying at the top of the third floor landing. He kicked it with his toe, sending it skittering across the marble floor as he hopped about on one foot, trying to regain his balance. When he had, he looked down at what had tripped him.

Twin ruby eyes winked up at him from out a silver wolf’s head.

His father’s sword.

Andri stared at the silver blade, confused. What was Alestair’s sword doing on the landing? The pyromancer never went anywhere without it. And then he realized he had kicked the sword into the middle of a crimson pool.

Blood .

Red smears led from one end of the pool down the hallway. Lured on by a dread curiosity, Andri bent down to pick up his father’s sword as he skirted the scarlet puddle and followed the grisly trail.

It led to the body of a serving girl, only a few years younger than Andri. She was responsible for making sure the tenants on this floor had fresh linens. For some reason, Andri could not remember her name.

She lay on her back, glassy blue eyes staring up at the ceiling. Her throat had been torn out, so savagely that he could see the bones of her spine.

The thick smell of blood and the sight of her glistening tendons and exposed muscle made Andri’s stomach churn. He turned his head and vomited, hot bile burning his mouth and nose.