Free Wolf Hunting by Jane Lindskold Page A

hesitation, Powerful Tenderness added his own guttural note.
    Plik tried a howl or two, but the sounds he made were less than commanding, so he fell silent, listening. The distant howls of the resident pack mingled their notes into the concert, and Plik’s sensitive ears caught more distant notes from the next island.
    He also “heard” a faint and tenuous vibration that made him wonder if the moon had indeed heard the wolves’ call. Perhaps Powerful Tenderness also heard this sound that was not a sound, for he raised the polished mirror toward the moonlight with renewed confidence.
    Did the reflected moonlight seem brighter? Plik wasn’t certain. He glanced up at the moon to try and gauge differences in intensity. So it was that he witnessed Firekeeper doing something very odd.
    She had raised herself onto her left knee, her right leg crooked as if she was about to push herself upward into a standing position. Swiftly, she drew her hunting knife from its sheath. The cabochon-cut garnet in the hilt glinted as it caught the moonlight; then Firekeeper made a horizontal slashing motion against her right leg and blood beaded, then flowed, from the cut.
    Firekeeper cupped her free hand to gather the blood, then tossed the liquid forward so it splattered against both the mirror in Powerful Tenderness’s hand and the silver door. A few droplets touched Plik’s fur as well, and he felt sickened.
    Firekeeper caught a bit more blood, and again tossed it to land upon mirror and door. Then she pulled a bit of cloth from her waistband and bound her cut thigh with swift efficiency. Lastly, she cleaned both sides of her knife blade against the cloth and dropped the weapon into its sheath.
    The entire process took no more than three or four easy breaths, and Plik was too shocked to make a sound. Blind Seer must have caught the scent of his partner’s blood in the air, for his howling faltered, and would have ceased but that Firekeeper shouted:
    “No! Keep singing. Look!”
    She gestured toward the mirror that Powerful Tenderness held. Not the faintest doubt remained that the reflected moonlight had become brighter, coalescing and contracting, seeming to focus on the beads of blood—or did the blood focus on the moonlight?
    Plik “heard” the faint vibration of magic intensify, becoming a single note that echoed the wolves’ song. The silvery light shot forth, and would have been swallowed by the sky, but Powerful Tenderness had recovered his composure and directed the beam toward the silver door. The light hit the mirror-bright surface and suddenly the entirety was illuminated, making the surrounding area brighten as if an oil-soaked pyre had burst into cold flame.
    The blaze of light made Plik’s eyes shut, but he forced them open despite the searing pain. In the new illumination he saw the beam from the mirror angling toward the sky as Powerful Tenderness shied away from the radiance. Plik leapt, scrabbling half up Powerful Tenderness as he might the trunk of a tree. He seized hold of Powerful Tenderness’s arm and pulled the mirror back into alignment with the silver door.
    Plik saw now what must be done. When the mirror slipped from Powerful Tenderness’s grasp, he seized it. He caught the light that bounced from the silver door, channeled it back again, running the brilliance along the door’s edge, catching it again, and sending it back until the door’s edges had all been unbound.
    The light failed with the opening of the last seam, and the door swung open into absolute darkness.
    A shrill scream came from where Truth waited on top of the fill-dirt mound. For the first time in days, the jaguar moved with purpose and volition. She leapt into the pit, once again leaving leash and harness behind her.
    Firekeeper leapt after, landing clumsily on her newly cut leg. There was a blur of grey as Blind Seer followed her.
    Plik was suddenly aware that the howling had ceased, not just that of the three proximate wolves, but