Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

ever looked at those swirled markings, he had found them deeply comforting. He had thought the whirling tracery spoke of something marvelous, hinted that he was part of a larger pattern of endlessly spiraling harmony.
    At that moment, Faolan’s reveries were interrupted.
    “Up, gnaw wolf,” a pack elder growled. “Duncan MacDuncan is ready to see you. Mind you do the proper veneration and obeisance as you approach. The chieftain is failing rapidly and it is most important that submission rituals be upheld. None of your blasphemous byrrgis behavior, cur. Are you ready?”
    “Yes,” Faolan said meekly, and rose to follow the pack elder. He was careful to tuck his tail between his legs and lay his ears flat despite having a terrible itch in one that seemed to bother him more, the flatter he laid his ears.
    The chieftain’s cave was immense, and in the center was a pit with a fire burning in it. On the wall hung scraped hides and an array of antlers—deer, caribou, musk ox—all of which had the most intricate carvings. Faolan tried to keep his gaze down, but it seemed his eyes were drawn back to the flames.
    The clan elders who comprised the raghnaid were in their ceremonial headdresses of gnawed bones and necklaces, and it seemed to Faolan that there were only two sounds in the cave—the crackling and snapping of the fire as it devoured the air, and the odd clicking rattle of bones. No one spoke. But when Faolan glanced up, hesaw something he had not expected in their eyes—fear. Do they really think I am moon rot? he wondered.
    The ancient wolf Duncan MacDuncan was reclining on the pelt of a bull elk. Once he had been a wolf with a dark gray coat, but with age, he was almost white. There were bare patches on his shoulders that revealed scars from long-ago combat. His shoulders almost suggested a landscape of the battlefields he had known. Like scorched earth, it was as if the fur had refused to grow there any longer. His eyes were milky green, the color of the streams that ran down from the glaciers in the high country. There was a notch in one of his ears, and it was not hard to imagine the cougar who had torn it.
    Behind him, soaring into the shadows, were two racks of the most enormous caribou antlers Faolan had ever seen. Beside the chief an elegant she-wolf rested on her haunches, her head held high. It was Cathmor, the chieftain’s mate. Her dark gray coat was almost black, and her eyes a lovely shade of green that reminded Faolan of the mossed rocks in the river where he and Thunderheart had fished their only summer together.
    “Bring him forth,” the chieftain wheezed. The elder who had escorted Faolan gave him a rough nudge, andFaolan began the traditional belly crawl toward the pelt where Duncan MacDuncan lay. The sight of this once noble chieftain shocked Faolan. Duncan MacDuncan looked broken, as if the slightest blow would shatter him completely.
    “Close enough,” the elder said after a few seconds.
    “No! Closer,” Duncan MacDuncan rasped.
    When Faolan reached the edge of the pelt, he twisted his neck and began to grind his face into the floor. He caught a glimpse of the fire out of the corner of one eye. His hackles started to rise and then settled, and a calm stole through him.
    The chieftain stirred slightly on his pelt. “Easy, my dear heart,” Cathmor whispered, and lay a calming paw on the chieftain’s flank.
    What has this lad seen in the flames? the chieftain wondered. Does he see that it is about to snow before the snow moons? That this spring, the ice will not crack until it is almost the Moon of the Singing Grass? Is the time of the Long Cold returning?
    If Faolan has the fire sight, then indeed he is a special wolf, thought Duncan MacDuncan, and a portent of grievous times ahead . Then the chieftain shook his head as if to clear it of such dire thoughts. He had a last duty toperform. As supreme leader of the clan and high lord of the raghnaid , he opened the proceedings.
    “Faolan, gnaw wolf of the MacDuncan clan, the raghnaid has been assembled to determine if your actions during a recent byrrgis constitute a violation of our laws. Nearly one thousand years ago, when our ancestors were led here by the first Fengo, we planted laws, traditions, and codes of behavior as thickly as the trees of the deep forests from whence we came. Because we believed that a country without laws was more dangerous than one without trees, that without them, dignified and noble wolves could