Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

37. Not a Shaman

"Except for you, Akrum, " Naktim finished, despite their hints.

Akrum's shoulders stiffened.

"The truth-seer picked an interesting name for the only man who had survived the slaughter. For his son," Naktim said pitilessly. Akrum meant 'sacrifice', Volya realized. Or 'the sacrificed'.

Akrum moved his staff through the air, never stumbling once as if the toxic words didn't hold the sway over him. The top of the headpiece grew a spike that glowed orange. The symbols appeared in the air. The traced lines blazed. A regular burning stick could recreate the same effect, only the illusory trajectory would wink out almost instantly.

Volya studied them with rapt eyes. This was it, the way to the Buyan Isle.

A bow loop for eternity. A spiral for the sun and moon. A square for this world, the mist-wolf named the runes for Volya.

He reveled in each symbol and its purpose. Forget the fairy tales! Who cared if the Buyan Isle hid the Death of the Undead King! The island hid the secret of how he, Volya, could carry out Liam's bidding and break Anabelle's curse. It could tell him where his family was. Even if they didn't wait for him there, it was still a gateway to the world where he belonged.

Tears stung Volya's eyes, as the labels washed off him. A hellion, an orphan, a fatherless cur, a foreigner... he was none of that. He was a Walkwe and he stood on the threshold of his ancestral ground. Someone tried to poison him to deny him, but he was here. He won something already and he didn't intend to stop.

The mist curling over the river solidified into a handsome bluff, topped by the oaks, and a strip of yellow beach at its foot. A few round standing stones, reminiscent of the gigantic millstones, rose from the sand, buried to about a quarter of their height. They boasted the same symbols that Akrum drew in the air—infinity loops, spirals and squares—carved in by a patient hand, highlighted by coal, white chalk and ochre.

Akrum's wolves turned as one, probably eager to reach their unseen lair at the isle, then trotted to the water's edge.

With one more glance at the fires devouring the Walkwe's stronghold in the distance, Akrum stepped aside, ushering the refugees to follow the wolves. Women and beasts mingled, becoming ghostly silhouettes once their feet touched the milk-coloured water. They too turned to look back at their burning past. A foreboding tugged at Volya's heart, remembering a tale of a wife who got encased in a pillar of salt for the sin of glancing at the home she was leaving behind.

The Walkwe women dissolved into the mist of time. They had passed on millennia ago, unreachable, their pain forgotten, yet he stood witness to their tragedy. The unspilled tears stung his eyes.

After a while, only Akrum and Naktim remained on the shore.

Naktim no longer bothered to conceal that she was watching the faraway fires.

"You wanted to fight rather than flee," Akrum guessed.

"What is it to you, the Sacrifice Who Lived?"

"For now I live," Akrum corrected her. "And you will fight, Naktim, just not today."

"Is this a prophecy?" Naktim's nostrils flared like the wolves'.

"No, it's not. I don't have the gift of the True Sight."

"The Exile didn't reveal to you every secret that is hidden from the rest of us?"

"Father only told me what I needed to know."

She scoffed. "But you speak just like him, like a Shaman, in riddles and threats."

"I'm not a Shaman, but a Gatekeeper and a Sacrifice."

"It makes no difference to me."

"But there is a difference. I survive to see that the Walkwe's bond with the land is renewed. That we are granted the Foremother's ancient blessing. Then..." he trailed off.

The growing fires reflected in Naktim's eyes. "If you're not a Shaman, then your promise that I should live to fight another day is useless. You dare soothe me like I'm a weeping child?"

"I wouldn't know how to shush a child, since my father made me live with the wolves from infancy."

"Did the wolves teach you to turn each word inside and out like a shirt? Or was it your father?"

Akrum opened his mouth to object, but Naktim spat on the ground. "Don't say another word! We've turned tail before the Yamnaya to save our skins. Nothing would change that."

"We must carry on," he pleaded softly. "The Walkwe are a mighty tribe, but so were our kin to the East, and the North, and the South. None of them withstood the onslaught of the Yamnaya's horses, spears and bows."

She spat again instead of responding. Happily, she didn't aim at Akrum, or Volya would have hated her. Her hand drew a strange sign in the air, though it didn't leave the orange afterglow.

"Don't trouble your ancestors for protection in vain," Akrum said sternly. "We need to save our prayers for the uttermost end of need."

"What Yamnaya did to the horses is a vile magic."

Akrum shook his head. "They descend from the lowest of the low among the tribes. They were those deaf to the call of the Spirits. The outlaws. We drove them to the badlands before the First Dawn, because they had no magic. Now they came back, their wrath ripened by millenia of festering."

"The evil Spirits taught them this magic in the deserts where no beast trots, and no bird flies but the vultures," Naktim said.

"No," Akrum insisted. "Their mastery over horses is not magical, only cruelty and patience. My father had seen it."

A sigh escaped through Naktim's gritting teeth. "I almost wish we had the Exile with us to read the omens."

"So do I."

For a second Volya thought that Naktim would scream. Akrum's humility was nigh unbearable. But she restrained herself. "You've said that I would fight. Now you say that there's no defeating the Yamnaya. Are you hoping for my death?"

"No." Akrum broke off a long stem of grass and chewed on it.

"Then why do you want me to fight?"

"Too few had come with you."

Naktim bristled. "Those were all who would come. The rest stayed at their hearths."

"Yes, I know. So we must raid the raiders, steal back our kinswomen and accept them among the Walkwe," Akrum said. "You, me, and all others who can, will fight for that or there is no future."

For the first time, something akin to hope lit Naktim's eyes. "Maybe they kept some men as prisoners too. We should strike fast, before they sacrifice them."

The fluffy tuft at the end of the grass stem hit Akrum's face, because he bit into it too hard. "No Walkwe man is destined to walk the solid ground for a while yet. Only the sky. My father saw it."

These words bent Naktim, as if Akrum strapped an invisible weight to her shoulders. "Except for you," she said.

Before Akrum could reply, she walked into the river, kicking up water in impotent anger. The water foamed white around her ankles.

Akrum shifted his grip on the staff, tightening it until his tattooed knuckles turned white.

He stepped on the misty causeway, the way Volya might have stepped on an escalator, and while being drawn away into the fog, drew the familiar symbols in reverse order.

A square for this world. A spiral for the sun and moon. And an infinite loop for eternity, the mist-wolf echoed each one.

The fog thickened over the Don River, as far as the eye could see, and the Buyan Isle disappeared.

For a second, the image from the ancient era still lingered in Volya's vision, then everything went black.