THE LUATHI CAMP was laid out in haphazard disarray. Tents and flimsy timber sheds were thrown up where they would, without any pretense to order or plan. Fires crouched in the hollow spaces, and the reek of cooking meat and thin wine was nearly as cloying as the stink of man and wood smoke.

Culrann knelt where their eyes could not see him, and watched.

Should the king know he was here, Ulrem would no doubt be moved to anger. But Culrann had only a vague intimation of what a king was: a great leader from stories dimly remembered out of his youth. From the life before the wood claimed him, and he found his true family. Kings were men who wore crowns, and gave commands, and lived in hearts of stone. They were cruel and wicked, and they laid claim to the wood and the water, to the sky and the stones and the speechless things that walked with the seasons.

The wolf in him had no concept of such a thing. In all things, Culrann was divided, for there was the wolf, and there was the man. At best, the wolf knew that a king was a shepherd of a sort. Seldom dangerous on its own, but if the shepherd raised his hue and cry, and summoned his pack-brothers, then things could get tricky.

But Ulrem was neither a king, nor a shepherd. Not in the way that Culrann understood such things. Like a wolf, he was a hunter, a stalker of shadows. His blood smelled wild, and his eyes were fierce. The wulvere had walked beside the Lion for nearly ten years, and had never seen him kill what did not need killing. In that way, he knew the way of the forest. But in other ways, Ulrem was not a wolf. He was proud, prouder than the mountains that reared their dark heads above the forest and scraped against the skies. And he was as strong as a raging bear. Never had Culrann been able to wrestle Ulrem to submission. It was that depth of strength, perhaps, that pulled the wulvere into his wake, drew him along.

The king was born to that fearless strength. That part of his heart Culrann recognized deeply, in the ancient way that was so old there were no words for it. A leader knew the strengths of the pack. He did not force them to work as one, did not drive them by cruelty or fang. It simply was, as was the wind, or the current of a river.

This, the wolf that lived within Culrann, understood. Ulrem’s might, his pride, was the beating heart of his hunt. That was what a king truly was, and Culrann had no choice but to go along with it.

Dawn had come and gone without Ulrem’s return. Culrann found the signs of his passing into the wood by the river with ease, and traced them to the ruined stonework on the riverside. There he found blood—king’s blood—and more. A man’s butchered body, already set to by ravens, clothed in somber blacks.

The Luathi had not masked their trail. Content in their victory, they must have hauled Ulrem away back to their camp. Culrann did not need his nose to follow the trail of blood.

Now the Arthoni and Nuadon lords were arguing over how to proceed. Donnoth and Rann, Ulrem’s captains of the Left and Right, sat in stony silence. Culrann could smell fear on them, and the stink of abandonment. The gathered lords wasted a day, and then two, over senseless arrogance.

Culrann was wise enough in the way of men to recognize an old trap: shorn of the leader, the next strongest would tear at one another to take his place, and each battle would leave the pack weaker.

The wulvere grit his teeth against dark thoughts. He had left their squabbling and went hunting. Nothing would be found out without a nose to the ground, he knew. So he crept and he crawled until he was close enough to watch the enemy, listening for any sign of his missing king.

Drunken Luathi soldiers wandered back and forth in the late hour. They were nearly blind in the dark, but Culrann did not see with the eyes of men. He reached out for his wolves, whose names had no man-words, and felt them circling the camp. They were but three, Culrann and his brothers, but there was another pack nearby, a wild run of half a dozen who peered down at the Luathi camp with a mixture of fear and anger.

This was their place, and the loud, stinking slobs had driven them out and into the hills. They would not serve Culrann, for he was strange to them, but they did listen.

Here, came a thought across his mind. He felt it more than heard it, an impression of a slim figure moving through the darkness. The wolves struggled with words: they thought in impressions of sight and scent, of music and movement. He slid backward and circled the camp.

Such spying was difficult around the Lion’s camps. They were laid out cleanly, for the Arthoni lords insisted on orderliness. Ulrem recognized the value of it, and allowed them to build the camps as they saw fit. The lanes between streets were wide to allow for horses or gangs of men to move quickly. The perimeter around the Lion’s camp was hacked back to fifty yards and patrolled regularly. There were no idle men in the Lion’s ranks, no indolence. By contrast, the Luathi grounds seemed to overlap and intersect, with no true center. The men on patrol watched the small patches of ground at their feet, and nothing more.

Culrann thought they were like children, playing at army. They were men of small range unused to the wider world of false horizons. They were not wolves.

He crept along the wood, following the impression of his brother-wolf. It was the silver-back, slinking along behind the moving figure, making no sound. The figure did not go far. Just deep enough into the trees to find the true darkness that lay upon the wild. Stars shone like silver pins overhead, but there was no moon. The wolves thought of it as a dead night, and would have preferred to rest. Culrann was moved to agitation, and would not let them. Not until he had found the king.

Kneeling in the brush, he laid a hand upon the wolf’s head and rubbed its ears. Twenty paces away, in a clearing carpeted by long, soft grass bent with moisture and pocked by the autumn flowers, was the figure he sought. It wore a dark robe that dragged over the grass as it stopped before a tree near the center of the glade. The figure knelt and began to speak.

A woman, Culrann realized. No mistaking that voice. Frowning, he crept closer, leaving the wolf crouched in shadow. Her prayer was edged and tight, and he got a sense of wicked chill about those words.

A raven shrieked. The single note was like an accusation. Culrann froze, but the praying stopped. As the woman turned to face him, more ravens began to cry, and the wulvere realized all at once that the tree was filled with black-feathered birds. Their eyes gleamed like evil constellations among the branches.

Culrann’s palm brushed the head of his ax.

The woman reached for the heavy hood of her robe and pulled it back. She was a slim thing, only a few summers beyond girlhood. Her hair was tied back in plaited ropes laced with golden rings, and she might have been pretty, save the shocking darkness of her eyes. They were blacker than black, the color of the void between stars. The dark of the wild of a deep and slumbering cave.

“You serve the Lion,” said the woman.

He looked away, unable to hold her gaze. “I do.”

“Your king lies in chains yonder,” the woman answered, pointing with a slim hand. Her nails were long and filed to a point, much like talons.

Culrann looked at those, and the hunching ravens, and wanted to leave. This was not a place for men or wolves, he realized. He had intruded on something sacred and ancient. Something that now looked at him from a hundred eyes, and bent its ill will upon him. Taboo came the word.

Despite a gnawing instinct to retreat, Culrann held his ground. His fingers gripped the damp turf like a man clasping to a cliffside. He would not leave the king behind. He had given his word.

“Your heart beats with two bloods,” said the woman. She flowed forward, drawing near. There was no fear in her dark eyes; only a sort of curiosity. Culrann shied back from her. “I mean you no harm, grimwalker. I have never seen your kind before.”

Run, came the thought of the silver-back, of bounding leaps before a wildfire.

“What do you want?”

She smiled, transfixing him with her gaze. He should have left, fled. This was no place for a man or a wolf! Damn his pride!

The silver-back leaped from its hiding place and lowered its wedge-shaped head. It snarled at the woman, who was near enough to Culrann now that he could feel her heat. The woman’s robes drew apart, and he saw she was naked as the night beneath, her pale limbs sinuous and muscled.

His heart beat hard in his breast, threatening to crash through his ribs.

Run! Snake! Run!

“I have a message for you, Culrann Grimwalker, carried over a thousand miles. I dreamed you would walk these trees. I dreamed you would see my flesh, and that you would hear my words.” One hand drew the robe aside, hiding nothing. Culrann’s mouth went dry and he blinked, the two natures warring against one another: the simple lust of man, and the terror of the trapped wolf.

The woman seized Culrann by the chin, her sharp nails biting into the flesh of his jaw and throat. He could not move, could not turn or run. The silver-back leaped at her with a blood-curdling snarl, but the witch threw a hand up. The wolf bounded off a wall of air.

No, Culrann told it. Wait.

“Hear me, old wolf,” she whispered. “The Morignon speaks through me! The Lion lies on the edge of death. Should he die, Celba will fall into shadow. Should he live, the seven kingdoms will be destroyed utterly. No man can save him, for he is his own master.”

“Then what—” Culrann gasped, fighting the spell that bound his arms and legs, “What am I to do?”

“Bring them here. All of them. Bring the Lion’s pride down upon his enemies, but slay not a one of them until the matter is decided. Do this, and a third part will be joined to the two. Is this not the way of the wolf?”

“He will live,” Culrann growled. “Strong is the blood of the Lion!”

“Strong is the blood of Imaahis that flows in his veins. Pray it is strong enough.”

She released him, and all at once he sagged to the ground. Old bones groaned in protest as he jumped to his feet.

“Run, grimwalker!” she cried, throwing her arms up with wild gales of laughter. Her cloak flapped about her like the vast, black wings of death itself. Surely even the sluggard Luathi patrolmen would hear her shrieking!

Culrann’s terror got the better of him, and his courage buckled. He fled despite the shame. The witch’s laughter pursued him long after he plunged into the darkness of the wood, racing after the silver-back along the secret ways of the forest.

And always, he felt those ravens’ cruel eyes on his back.