The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia A McKillip

Author:Patricia A McKillip
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Atrix fought the Hunter until he vanished with the moon. The Hunter pursued the White Wolf through the wood into the open field; the Wolf hid among the ghosts of Hunter’s Field. Now he was a sword in the hand of a warrior, until the warrior fell, and the sword dropped to the ground, and the moonstruck blade reflected the Hunter’s searching eyes. The mage became fire clinging to the bloody rag wrapped around an arrow flying toward the highest window in the keep. The window became an eye; the eye blinked, shifted. The arrow struck solid stone, dropped into the snow. The ghostly flame went out; the mage fled. Remembering the living, he lured the Hunter again and again away from the castle. As raven, he tried to fly toward Chaumenard, draw the Hunter after him. The Hunter’s hounds became ravens, drove Atrix back onto the field, back toward the wood.

The Hunter refused to be driven from the field, and Atrix refused to leave without him. He harried the Hunter constantly out of shape, so that those within the castle would not see him. When Burne Pelucir’s hunt rode slowly out of the wood near midnight and blew a weary fanfare to the gate, the Hunter and his horse and hounds were night-shadows, pinned motionless and paper-thin, on the ground the hunters rode across.

Talis was not with them.

The Hunter would not speak, nor would he let Atrix past his raven’s eyes into his mind. When the moon grew small and cold among the stars, his hounds fanned the field, hurried the mage across it. Atrix, trying to see into his making, find a name for it behind the Hunter’s eyes, saw only the most bitter of memories: the King of Pelucir, the shaft of the banner of Pelucir driven through his heart, dragged down among the hounds.

“What are you?” he cried, losing his hold of the Hunter, who seemed to have no substance but power. But the Hunter did not speak until the moon set.

Then his dead moon-eyes held Atrix’s and he said, “Sorrow,” and vanished.

Atrix, driven uphill to the edge of the wood, took his own shape, trembling with exhaustion. His own shape refused to do anything for a while but lie on the oak leaves. He waited, but the Hunter did not return. He listened for Talis, scented the wood like a wolf, searched it with his mind.

The wood was empty.

He closed his eyes and saw Talis’ father fall, the dark hounds gather over him. “Sorrow,” he whispered, and rose wearily, and carried that word with him to Burne Pelucir.

He found Burne sitting alone in the empty hall. Guards stood at every door. Guests looking as haggard as the King murmured in the corridors beyond, red-eyed, drinking wine, casting fretful glances into the silent hall. Servants hovered in doorways, waiting to be summoned. Atrix appeared out of torch smoke, as dishevelled and worn as the hunters. The guards shouted sorcery; the hunters raised what came to hand,

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