from the one sprawled helpless beneath him, abandoned the enticing scent of blood and meat for immediate survival.
On the wings of pain, like wings of fire, the wolf won its freedom at the price of another agonizing bound over the broken wall. It left blood on the stones of the hillside, all along the path into the forest, and it carried away with it the noose still clinging round its neck.
Guarinn had made a bright, high campfire in the center of the ruin, but Roulant didn't think it was doing much to warm or comfort Una. Nor did it seem to help Una that Roulant held her tightly in his arms — he wondered if she would ever stop weeping. Somewhere to the north the wolf howled, a long and lonely cry. Una shuddered, and Roulant held her closer.
'Una,' he said, turning away from the reminder of failure. 'Why did you follow me here?'
She sat straighter, her fists clenched on her knees, her eyes still wet but no longer pouring tears. 'I've known for two years that you went out into the forest on the Night. And I've known…'
She looked at Guarinn sitting hunched over the fire. The dwarf turned a little away, seemingly disinterested in whatever they discussed. Roulant, who knew him, understood that he was offering privacy.
'You've known what?' he asked, gently.
'That something's come between us. Something — a secret. Roulant, I've been afraid, and I had to know why you went into the forest on the Night, when no one else — '
'Someone else,' Guarinn amended. 'Thorne and me. And now that you're here, I suppose you think you should know the secret you've spied out?'
Una bristled, and Roulant shook his head. 'Guarinn, she's here and that gives her a right to know what she saw.'
'Not as far as I'm concerned.'
'Maybe not,' Roulant said. 'But she has rights where I'm concerned. I should have honored them before now.'
Guarinn eyed them both, quietly judging. 'All right, then. Listen well, Una, and I'll give you the answer you've come looking for.
'This ruin you see around us used to be Thorne's house,' he said. 'A quiet place and peaceful. No more though. It's only a pile of stone now, a cairn to mark the place where three dooms were doled out this night thirty years ago. Three dooms, twined one round the other to make a single fate.'
The wind blew, tangling the smoke and flame of the small campfire. Roulant wrapped his arms around Una again and held her close for warmth.
'Girl,' the dwarf said. 'Your hiding place tonight was once a bridal chamber. It never saw the joy it was fitted out for…'
'Thorne asked but two guests to come witness and celebrate his marriage. One of them was me, and I was glad to stand with him as he pledged his wedding vows. The other was Tam Potter, and his was a double joy that night, for he was Thorne's friend and the bride's cousin. She was from away south, and I don't think her closest kin liked the idea of her wedding a mage. But Tam was fair pleased, and so he was the kinsman who bestowed her hand.
'Mariel, the girl's name; and she was pretty enough, but no rare beauty. Yet that night she glowed brightly, put the stars to shame; for so girls will do when they are soon to have what they want and need. She needed Thorne Shape-shifter and had flouted most of her kin to have him. No less did Thorne need her.
'The first night of autumn, it was, and the bright stars shone down on us as we stood outside the cottage. Old legends have it that wedding vows taken in the twined light of the red moon and the silver will make a marriage strong in love and faith. Perhaps those legends would have been proven that night. Perhaps. We did never learn that, for another guest came to the wedding — uninvited, unwelcome, and the first we knew of his coming was when he stood in our midst, dark and cold as death.
'A mage, that uninvited guest, black-robed and with a heart like hoar-frost — and you must remember that this is no tale of rival suitors, one come in the very nick of time to rapt away the maiden he loves. This is a tale of two young men, one so poisonously jealous of the other that he must — for hate — spoil whatever his rival in power had.
'The name of the Spoiler? I will not speak it. Let it never be remembered. This is how dwarves reward murderers, and I know no other way as good.
'He laid hands on the girl, that dark mage, in a way no man should touch another's wife; magicked her from sight before any one of us could move to prevent. Aye, but he didn't take her far, in hatred and arrogance took her only within the cottage. In the very instant we knew her gone, we heard her voice raised in terror and rage. Close as she was, the evil mage's wizard ways kept us from coming to her aid until it was too late. The spell lifted. Thorne found her quickly in the bridal chamber. And he saw the mage defile her… and worse.
'Mariel lay cold and still on the ground, like a fragile pretty doll flung aside and broken, Thorne's dear love stricken for spite by the Spoiler.
'Seeing her dead, Thorne Shape-shifter showed the Spoiler how he'd earned his name.
'You have seen the wolf, and so you know what the Spoiler saw in the moments before his death. But you have never heard such screaming as I heard that night: never heard such piteous pleading, nor heard anyone wail for mercy as the Spoiler did, him torn by the fangs of the great gray wolf.
'Tam Potter and I could have tried to stop Thorne, but we did not. We stood by, watched the wolf at his ravening work. We should have granted mercy.'
Despite the hot, high fire, Una sat shivering, her hand a small fist in Roulant's.
'Tam died wishing we'd granted that mercy,' Guarinn said softly. 'And I sit here now wishing no less, for the Spoiler died with a curse on his lips. It was a hard one, as the curses of dying mages tend to be, and it marked us all with the fate of hunter and hunted.'
Stiff and cold from sitting, Una got to her feet; she did not answer when Roulant called to her. She needed a place to be private with what she'd learned. The night was crisp and bright, as lovely as it must have been this time thirty years ago. As she walked, Una discovered the shape of the ruin, saw that it was very like the little stone house near the bend of the brook in Dimmin. It lacked only one room to be exactly the same. In the Dimmin house, Thorne kept only a stark sleeping loft under the eaves.
Una stood for a long time before the dark mouth of the little cave of fire-blacked beam and broken stone that had sheltered her tonight; all that was left of a fouled bridal chamber.
She returned to stand by the fire. 'Tell me,' she said.
'Thorne must surrender his very self one night each year and hope that Roulant or I will end the curse by killing the wolf. This,' Guarinn said, 'is an inherited obligation.'
Una stood quietly, her eyes on the fire, the flames and the embers. 'If you kill the wolf, what will happen to Thorne?'
It was Roulant — silent till then — who answered.
'The curse will be over. He'll begin to age, grow old again, like the rest of us. Thorne hasn't got any elven blood, Una, though everyone thinks so. It's the curse that's held him in time.'
'Guarinn,' she said softly. 'Why haven't you killed the wolf in all these thirty years?'
'You'd think it would be easy, aye? Take the first shot as he was changing and end the matter. It isn't so easy. Once before, binding him slowed the change, and we tried that again tonight. But sometimes
…' The dwarf shuddered. 'Sometimes he's changed between one breath and the next. Sometimes faster than that, and the wolf is gone before either one of us can pick up a weapon. He doesn't just look like a wolf. He IS one! He'll tear at you, running, and he's too canny to stay around fighting losing battles.
'So,' she said. 'You have to go out and hunt the wolf?'
Neither answered. A glance passed between them and Roulant got to his feet. He took her hand, his own very cold as he led her into the shadow of a low broken wall.
'Una,' he said. 'We can kill the wolf if we can find it — '
'That won't be hard tonight. You could track him by the blood.'
'We could. Except…' His face shone white in the moonlight, his eyes dark with dread. 'Except that we dare
