Grayheart, p.1
Grayheart, page 1
GRAYHEART
By
Tara K. Harper
Dear Reader:
Every now and then you read a book that just sweeps you away.
That's what happened when I read Tara Harper's first Wolfwalker book: It grabbed me and didn't let me go until I had read the very last page… which left me begging for more. Her descriptions of the action had me on the edge of my seat—especially when the heroine, who was afraid of heights, desperately picked her way up the side of a sheer cliff (see Tara's bio at the end of this book to learn why her action reads so realistically!). And the telepathic bond between the heroine and her wolf was as beguiling, as satisfying, as the relationship between a rider and her dragon in Anne McCaffrey's beloved Dragonriders of Pern books.
I love Tara's books. (So does Anne McCaffrey, for that matter!) I want to share them with as many people as possible.
And that's why I'm thrilled that Tara has returned to the world of the wolfwalkers with a brand-new heroine, a brand-new wolf, and a brand-new adventure: The perfect introduction for those who missed the earlier books, and another great reading experience for her growing legion of fans. Read it: You'll like it!
In fact, I'm so sure you'll like this book that I'm willing to bet on it. This book is GUARANTEED to be a great read (see last page for details). From where I sit, it's a sure thing!
GRAYHEART
Tara K. Harper
For my brother, Kevin Harper,
who saved me from losing my leg
to that bull sea lion with the broken tusk
A special thank you to Kevin Harper; Dan Harper; Richard Jarvis; Sandra Keen; Marc Wells; Ed Godshalk; Thomas Moore, University of Arizona; Dr. Howard Davidson; and Dr. Ernest V. Curto, University of Alabama, Birmingham.
I
Steel gleamed. It was night, but even with the lack of light, the blade shone in her eyes like a flat of polished glass. The hand that held the knife was draped with shadow; the body, hidden by the dark, was tense as ice before it breaks. Behind her, the warehouse labs were nearly lightless; the floors glowed only faintly to outline the paths of the open rooms and halls. Outside, the nomoon night shrouded the warehouse walls, and the streets themselves were black. And yet the steel knife in the doorway gleamed.
Rezsia did not blink. She did not move. She barely felt the absence of the pulse that should have pounded in her throat. Then, finally, the heartbeat rolled through her body like a kettledrum in a canyon. One beat, and an hour of staring at that blade. Another pulse, and a night and a day, while her lungs forced a hundred warnings to her racing, feverish brain. Something harsh swept through her teeth, and she realized she was breathing.
Could he see her clearly in the shadows? Did he know just where to strike? If he shifted—even fractionally—there was no movement to her night-adjusted eyes. She thought a cold breeze touched her spine, but her skin did not dare shiver. Deep in her mind, an echo howled, and blocks away, from beneath the stable, a lone, gray shape leaped up.
The flat, glass vials in her pocket were cold against her frigid fingers. She was going to die, she told herself in a kind of absent horror, for a fungus in her pocket. NeGruli's man would gut her like a rabbit. Skin first, then her innards, then up under her ribs to her heart. And when her bones were bare to the moons, and her blood steamed hotly in this chill, spring night, he'd find the glass containers in her pocket; and with them, take the rest of her family to the trial block, and condemn them to join her in death.
One hand clenched with futile strength: she had no sword to grip. Her bow was on her riding beast, along with the war bolts she had borrowed from an older brother. The sheath and long knife that had hung from her belt—her eldest brother had them. Each awkward length of steel or sinew that could have protected her here would have made her clumsy inside the darkened warehouse, and she had left them behind. And false confidence from carrying the blades at all could have crippled her in the space through which she stole. No sword or bow; no steel at her waist; no throwing knives close at hand… Item by item, her mind took stock of every weapon on her belt or body, and when it was done, she still stared at the guard before her, because the only blades she carried that night were the two boot knives, securely in place, a meter from her fingers.
The doorway breathed with the chilling breeze that slid along the street. Damp, glowing roads pooled their shadows between the trees. Few outside lights were needed in the city—not with faintly luminescent streets to outline the buildings, and nine moons to shine through the night. But the moons did not help her on this night. Not one of them clung to the backsides of the clouds above the county. The long, thin bed of rootroad trees, whose glowing roots stretched out in hardened avenues, threw such faint light that Rezsia could barely define the outline of the guard against the doorway. The pale streets were sentinels of silence; and the night itself seemed to wait with neGruli's man for her movement.
The silent man shifted once, a hair closer—her eye exacted the distance—and she smelled the dust on his clothes. Not warehouse dust, or lab dust, or the smells of fungal gels or spores. His jerkin was like the pelt of a wolf—heavy with the scent of the woods and trails—and his bream was sweet with the same. She could almost feel his body before her as the wind curled around his frame; could tell he was taller than she. His hair was hidden beneath a warcap, and his face disguised by darkness. She didn't know if she saw or felt the way his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. But she knew that, even with the dark that hid them both, he did not miss the way her skin flinched over her ribs, away from the point of that knife.
She took a breath so gently in that it barely shifted her lungs.
"How about you put down that knife, and I won't have to hurt you."
Even to herself, her low—almost whispered—voice was steady. She did not know that her lips curled back from her teeth like a wolf, and the flash of fear that lay deep in her eyes looked more like the gleam of a hunter.
The knife did not waver.
"If you're waiting for the others, they won't be coming. They went to the Iron Bar for a grog." Her voice was cool as the steel of that blade. Yet, steady as she sounded, her muscles had somehow lost their heat and now clamped like stone to her bones. Her throat could barely push the words between her frozen teeth. Chilled, her hands seemed iced onto the glass vials. And in her mind, still thin and distant, the heat of the wolf who raced through the streets left her sea of fear untouched.
Did the knifeman slant his head to hear her? She turned her right palm up as if in entreaty. The blade flicked in response—its warning clear: don't move. But she was already closer to that gleaming blade—closer now by a hand. Her voice was so soft it was almost lost in the breathing of the wind. "Give me your name, blader."
Was it his breathing she heard or hers? She stretched her fingers and gained another inch. Her balance crept to the balls of her feet. "What would you do with my body, anyway? Stuff me into one of the kilns and put my ashes out in the morning—"
A slight sound broke the pale silence of the road. A footstep—a voice? For an instant neither moved. Then Rezs's hand shot out. She followed her own movement with a violent lunge. One hand grabbed the knifeman's wrist, the other grasped his elbow. She yanked him toward her. His ribs hit hers. She didn't notice when his elbow jammed into her side, half twisting her body around him. She threw her slight weight on the bend of his arm and wrenched it back toward his gut. His grip on the blade seemed to loosen. And just before the knife went in, she hesitated.
Like wind through a net, her leverage disappeared. His arm rolled up, not down and back. Hard muscles bunched beneath her grip. His thick wrist twisted; his iron fingers kept their grasp, and with an almost negligible flick of his body, she was turned like a doll and pinned against his chest.
She did not move. The frigid steel now pressed against her throat. One rock-hard arm circled her slender waist; the other crossed her chest from armpit to neck to hold that blade to her flesh. Eight blocks away the young Gray One's feet sped swiftly.
Her pulse beat against the hardened muscles of his forearm. Her breathing was harsh, yet her chest barely rose and fell, as if expanding her lungs might push her neck against the knife. Instinctively, her fingers dug into his arm, pulling it down and tight to her chest. The howl of fear that rose in her head deafened her to her thoughts. Her mental voice, even with control, was tinged with the fright that pounded against her ribs. She couldn't help her mental cry: Vlen!
Wolfwalker—I come!
Her nostrils flared. No weapons, she thought; she had only Gray Vlen and bluff—
"My dog doesn't like those who manhandle me."
The voice was low, but steady, and it took Rezs a moment to realize it was still hers.
"You've a wolf, not a dog." His voice was barely more than a breath. "If you value its life, keep it away. And be quiet."
But Vlen's shadow flicked along the city blocks. The low brush that grew between the rootroad trees broke beneath his weight and sent the night creatures skittering to avoid his feet. His link to Rezsia, new and thin in both their minds, strengthened with his urgency. Rezs's breath was suddenly caught in Vlen's, so that her lungs pumped with his, shallow and fast; and her nose was clogged with odors. She tried to separate the scents—to remember that it was her own hands that smelled of fungus; her clothes that smelled of the labs. It was the night that smelled of muggy dust and fog. And the knifeman, with that steel on her throat, smelled of trails and sweat. And blood. There was blood upon his hands, his knuckles. Faint—as if it had been clo tted. It made her dry mouth water as if she had bit her own lip to taste the same sweet, tangy fluid.
His hands shifted; the blade indented her flesh. "Keep him back," the knifeman breathed.
How did he know? Could this man feel the wolves as she did? Vlen—She couldn't keep the fright from her tone. Wait! For moons' sake, stop! Come no closer.
The wolf pulled up, uncertain, his limbs almost trembling with eagerness. Another sound drifted down the rootroad, and this time it was clear: footsteps in the nomoon night. Rezs jerked, and the steel seemed to slide on her neck. She froze again.
"Be still," the blader whispered. "And very, very quiet."
Rezs's hearing, heightened by the sense of the cub, caught the sound of the steps like a slow, unrhythmic pounding. She didn't think she could tense any further, but somehow she tightened like a coil. The arm that crushed her chest pressed down upon her breathing. The steel that laid its line of ice along her neck seemed to slice her flesh. And the howl that echoed in her mind was closer now, and louder: Vlen was two blocks away.
Wolfwalker! The fang is at your throat—
Stay, she forced herself to command. The guards that come this way—follow them—stalk them. Tell me how close they come. I'll deal with this one myself.
She didn't know if her surge of aggression was a result of her fear or his. But it heightened her adrenaline rush until she felt as if her muscles were so ready to strike that they would snap her bones if she did not release their tension. She inhaled in shallow breaths and formed a picture of the guard. Blood… The scent of the scabs on his hands… And the odor of the forest… The jerkin and belts that pressed on her ribs—they weren't the clothes of a guard, but a scout She felt the thoughts rattle through her skull. Her eyes, frozen forward, caught the shadows of the guards the same instant the blader moved.
But the knifeman did not shout to bring the other guards more quickly. He shifted back, taking her with him. It was the last thing she expected. She stumbled, and he caught her like a dancer and lifted her from her feet so that her boots didn't scrape on the building's stone.
Her brain did not seem to be working. She didn't struggle; instinctively, she let her body melt into his. Some tiny thought noted sardonically, as she shrank against his hard chest, that the drive to hide from new, unknown dangers must be stronger than that of fighting known ones.
He set her down as he felt her body balance against him. Then they moved, together, out of the doorway and along the wall, deep in the shadow of the eaves, his steely grip changing only its hold, not its strength upon her flesh. Behind them, the dark door swung almost silently shut, but to Rezs's urgent ears, its tiny click was like the first fall of an ax at dawn. She gasped. The steel pressed hard against her throat. The arms urged her back more quickly. Gray Vlen howled in her head, and Rezs choked silently as she tried not to answer out loud. Her body twitched as Vlen paced urgently back and forth, as if caught on a leash by the trees. She could feel the cub's feet hit the soft edges of the rootroad, then jump back into the line of darkness.
The formless shapes of neGruli's guards became sharper. Their voices, low and murmured, drifted like the fog.
"… saw him in Ramaj Ariye."
"Yes, but he's thinking of coming back to Randonnen."
"NeGruli won't like that."
"How's he to know? The boss is off sucking power from the elders like a roofbleeder taking blood from its victims. By the time he gets back from the council meeting, he'll have other things on his mind…"
Even in the dark, it was clear that all four of them were big—neGruli's guards were always broad and tall—and the long swords at their sides swung like batons to their steps. She would have walked right out into them, Rezs realized, had the blader not caught and stopped her at the door. She would have headed right out into the street where those guards and everyone else could have seen her, and then she would have had to run for it.
In her mind, Gray Vlen snarled at her. Head down, shoulders hunched; Vlen's shadow now barely brushed the shrubs as he followed the group of guards toward the warehouse. His yellow eyes gleamed at their movements as they passed his vantage point, and Rezs stared at the guards, not only through her eyes, but his.
Gray One, she sent urgently.
Wolfwalker, he returned. His mental voice trembled with eagerness that made Rezs's lips tighten. I am here.
She could feel the knifeman's pulse offset against her own; the tightness of her hands on him, and his on her waist and ribs, locked them in each other's arms like lovers. As one, they eased to the corner of the building, then paused. Rezs didn't have to look over the man's shoulder to see what halted their steps: she knew that wide alley as well as she knew the street beside her own home. It was not the clutter of kilns and firewalls, crates and storage cabinets that made the knifeman pause. It was not the lack of pattern to the placement of the baths or drains. Instead, it was the rubbish of glass and paper, brittle reeds, and snapping seed pods, across every meter of that area. It was the mass of garbage laid down each dusk—a jumble that was swept aside each morning. And it was impossible to walk through without making noise.
"… like to see his face when he finds out that Faure is back," said one of the guards.
"Turin, here, said she'd give her last sight of all nine moons to see the face-off."
"Who wouldn't? Faure neKintar has a way with words. If anyone could rouse the elders to realize neGruli's plans, it would be neKintar. Of course, neGruli pays as well as Faure talks. No matter what neKintar says, neGruli will have voting rights on the council by fall."
Another guard chuckled. "I'd hate to be in a Durn's boots when that happens."
"I'd hate to be in the boss's boots if he takes the west road—the Durn stopped three speakers last time they took that road out to the council meeting. You can bet the Durn would love to get their hands on neGruli."
"And I'd hate to be in your boots if you don't check the warehouse, by one…"
Rezs and the blader pressed back against the corner, but slunk no farther around it. Rezs knew there were shadows in which they could hide, but the knifeman did not shift toward them. NeGruli's men were so close now that Rezs could even hear their breathing. Her eyes, locked before on the knifeman's blade, now stared at the guards like a rabbit.
"Don't look at them," breathed the voice in her ear. Her start was swallowed by the tightening of the knifeman's grip.
"Close your eyes or look down." His lips brushed her earlobe. "Don't think of them. Don't think of us. Make your mind empty—as if you're not here. And keep the wolf away."
Gray Vlen, as if he could hear the man's voice, faded behind a tree. This time Rezs jerked for real. Instantly, the man's arms crushed her until she could not even gasp. If she had thought his grip was tight before, it was now like a cord of steel.
"You coming in?" It was one of the guards.
Another one—the tall woman—gestured toward the alley. "In a minute. Might as well do the outer rounds now."
The knifeman seemed to shrink back. "Close your eyes," he breathed sharply. Rezs obeyed: Vlen's sight was hers through the link.
Shadow shapes were suddenly lighter, but blurred in her mind's eye. The scent of the guards, of the knifeman, of herself clogged her nose through Vlen's. The knifeman's forearm moved over her mouth, loosely, so that even her breathing was muffled.
The woman's voice continued. "You check the doors. Roark and I will do the outer rounds. We can do the labs together."
The Gray One slunk along the edge of the rootroad on the other side of the street. His mind was hot with the scent of his prey.
Stay, she sent to the cub.
I can smell them. I can almost taste them on my tongue.
No! She made her mental voice hard and sharp. Wait there.
Closer—the two guards moved to the alleyway. The knifeman seemed to stop breathing. The urgency of the Gray One's whine pierced her so that she felt her mind go blank. The glass vials in her pocket seemed suddenly to glow like the streets, as if to say, Here we are. Come get us, and Rezs winced as if their light would hurt her closed eyes. She did not even recognize the absurdity of the gesture.
