The Legend of the White Wolf

He also knew what he ought to do, and paced back and forth in front of the Legion compound, ignoring the amused glances of the garun sentries. Almost an hour later he steeled himself to go home.

The merchant's quarter of the City of Heavenly Splendor had little of splendor about it, and nothing heavenly -- in that it had not changed in four years. The shops huddled in their own shadows, dark and secretive, their windows seldom offering glimpses of the wares within. Shouting and laughter and song poured from the open windows of the living quarters above the shops. Lines flapping with dingy fresh-washed clothes stretched across every alleyway. Dirty children, naked or dressed in rags, splashed in muddy gutters, fascinated by each discarded treasure they found: a dead cat, a barely broken pot, an almost wearable shoe. Beris watched them until they saw him in his gold-plumed helmet and ran away, shrieking and laughing.

He walked more slowly as he neared his father's shop, each trudging step more difficult than the last, his chest constricting until he grew faint. At last he reached the street, the block -- and it too was just the same.

Old Strembo still sold disreputable produce from a broken-down cart in front of the Young Men's Cooperative Hostel. The produce itself might have been the same, unidentifiable and probably inedible. Old Strembo wasn't actually selling today; he was napping under the Cooperative awning, while the Young Men sat on the stoop and pelted him with apple cores. They had been trying to dislodge him from his spot in front of the hostel as long as anyone could remember, but if this was the best they could do then perhaps the neighborhood had changed -- a little. In Beris's time they might have set his clothes on fire. They weren't the same young men, but there was little to distinguish them from those of ten years before -- from any who had come before: jobless youths with pale faces not long removed from spots, trapped in the dreary wasteland between the security of their parents' home and the comfort of their own.

Many of them would never find that comfort, Beris now realized, but would spend their lives drifting through the cooperative system, rootless and aimless, pelting old men with apple cores to occupy the empty hours until they were old men themselves. There had been a time Beris considered joining them, but he had thought their life exciting then, free of parents and worries and chores.

Under a wing of the hostel nestled a small stone shop. The windows were fly-specked and dark; above them two signs had long since been rendered illegible by the grimy city air. Beris knew what they said. "Leather," said the one on the left; the one on the right, "Drivas Lobick, prop." They probably hadn't been washed in four years.

Beris pushed the door open slowly, to minimize the tinkling of the little silver bell -- but no bell rang. He slipped into the cool, dark shop and looked up. The hook was still there, anchoring a spider's web that stretched to the ceiling, but the bell was gone.

He turned to the dark interior, but his eyes were blind from the sun and he could see nothing. He stood still and drank in the smells of the shop, the smells of his late childhood: sweet cedar from the cabinets, to keep the leather fresh; the soft fatty smell of soap, to keep the leather clean; the heavy tang of oil, to keep the leather supple -- and underlying all of it, the foundation smell, the sharp, bitter, acid bite of tannin.

Slowly, his eyes adjusted and the details of the shop emerged. Huge cabinets lined the walls of the shop, ponderous, gloomy guardians of the fine leather work Beris knew lay within. The panels of the cabinets were carved in low relief, rich scenes from history, from the legendary distant past to yesterday, a master work by a master carver, a distant connection of Drivas Lobick, prop. A single counter ran the length of the shop to his right, unadorned and unburdened. Beris was tempted to creep behind the counter to find his initials, carved into the soft wood, surrounded by twining vines.

At the far end of the shop a simple workbench sat in the glow of a single oil lamp. A man sat hunched over the bench, an awl in his right hand, intent on the design he was creating. Beris stood in the open door, the sun hot on his back and his shadow not halfway to the bench, and watched his father work.

His head strained forward as he scored the leather, and nodded when the scoring went well. His hair, the color of rust and streaked with grey, was kept from his face by a simple leather band, which he continually patted, as if to assure himself it was still there. His beard, mostly grey but streaked with rust, bobbed as he muttered to himself while he worked. At last he lay the awl aside, sat back in his chair, and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. His eyes widened when he saw Beris standing in the sun-filled doorway, and he shot to his feet.

"I'm sorry," he said, starting forward. "We're not really open today." His eyes fixed on Beris's helmet, then dropped to Beris's pips. "Oh, Lieutenant," he said, still coming forward. "Can I interest you in something? A new belt per --" He stopped short, staring at Beris's face. He blanched, then flushed. He clenched his fists and held them quivering at his sides. "You!" he said, his voice harsh and uneven. "Savage! Get out of my shop! Get out!" Not waiting to see if Beris would comply, he fled through the curtain behind the workbench.

"Baba," Beris said to the departing back, but the man seemed not to hear; Beris barely heard it himself.

Tears stung his eyes. He swallowed hard against his shame and sorrow, and looked around the shop, to fix forever in his mind every tiny detail of every cabinet, every crack in the walls, every unevenness of the floor. There was no need; he knew them already, every one.

As he turned to leave, a woman burst through the curtain and ran toward him. He flinched, but she stopped two paces away and simply stared at him.

"Beris," she said, her voice a whisper, her eyes glistening with unspilled tears.

"Aymara." Her name croaked out past the lump in his throat.

"He doesn't want to see you."

Beris nodded heavily. "I know. I came to share his grief."

"Oh, Beris." She crossed the last two paces and crushed him to her breast. He stood stiffly for a moment, then his arms crept up and held her tight. His head dropped, and he wept into her honey-colored hair.

Aymara, short and plump and rosy-cheeked, had been his best friend since he had come, an unwilling and resentful twelve-year-old, to live in his father's house. She was his father's wife. Only a few years older than Beris, she had refused to be his mother, and became instead his confidante, his confessor, his conscience. It was Aymara who steered him clear of the Young Men's Cooperative, and Aymara who encouraged him to remember the ways of the Eda when his father tried to beat them out of him. When he was first crushed by love, it was Aymara who soothed his broken heart and restored his broken pride. When the time came to join the Burning Wind, it was to Aymara alone he bade farewell.

Aymara held him now and rocked him, as she had done when he was twelve -- even then he'd been too big -- repeating his name softly, like a prayer. "Beris, Beris, oh, Beris."

Beris shook his head, nestling deeper into her warm, fresh hair. His helmet fell off and clattered to the floor.

"Come with me," Aymara said, taking him by the hand and leading him past the workbench. "You need some tea."

Beris wiped his tears with his free hand and smiled. General Toras ng'Artu had used tea as a crutch to help him through a difficult situation; to Aymara it was a universal remedy. Nothing was so bad that tea could not make it better -- if not cure it completely. Tea, and a healthy dose of straight talk.

She led him past the curtain and through the parlor, which was smaller and dingier than Beris remembered, but otherwise the same. Three padded chairs -- only one that didn't wobble -- grouped around a black lacquered table on which sat Aymara's best tea service -- never used, even for company. Here Merchant Lobick entertained important clients, the ones who bought in bulk and paid in paper. Several pictures adorned the walls: a painting of the King and Emperor, one of Aymara as a girl-bride, one a farmland scene at harvest time. And a drawing of a fully antlered buck, alert in a snowy forest. With a start, Beris recognized his own crude, boyish style. He didn't remember the drawing, but he remembered the buck. Beautifully framed in reddish oak, the drawing hung above the fireplace, facing the good chair. Beris glanced at the other walls, at the bureaus and breakfronts and shelves, without seeing anything more of his before Aymara pulled him through the far door into the kitchen.

This was Aymara's realm, and she ruled it unchallenged. In contrast to the rest of the house and shop, the kitchen was always filled with light. The clean white walls gleamed from constant scrubbing, the glass-fronted cabinets reflected and refracted the light from three lamps about the room -- always burning and always bright. The kitchen smelled as it always did, of fresh water and fresh bread, with a slight hint of soap. The kitchen table, the center of Aymara's world, stood in the center of her realm, and there she deposited Beris, on a straight-backed chair facing the stove.

Aymara used her stove the way the General used his tea. It gave her something to do while thinking what to say, and something to look at when she didn't want to look at him. She loaded the stove with fresh white wood, opened the damper, sloshed the kettle and set it to heat, and said, "Your father is a very proud man, Beris. Just like you."

She stopped, but Beris couldn't think of anything to say. He felt that perhaps he was supposed to say nothing, that perhaps she wasn't finished.

"You say you came to share his grief," she said, still to the stove. "What grief is that, Beris?"

Beris looked up sharply. "Why, for his brother Grivas." Was it possible they didn't know? "You have heard, haven't you?"

She turned to face him, leaning against the stove, her arms tightly crossed. "He heard a week ago. A week ago would have been the time to share his grief. His grief for his brother, at least. There is another grief he will not share, not even with me."

Beris paled. "A week ago! Oh, Aymara, had I known --"

"Yes, Beris, I'm sure you would have. But why didn't you know?"

Beris glanced about the room in confusion. "I heard only today," he said. "How could I have known?"

"We could have told you." She spun around and snatched the kettle as it started to boil. "Oh, Beris," she said into the steam. "You've been here six weeks now without letting your father and me know. It's that stupid pride of yours; and that stupid pride of his wouldn't let him go see you."

He watched open-mouthed as she busied herself with the tea. She dropped a handful of leaves into the pot and dumped the water too fast over it. The water splashed over the stove, hissing and popping, wreathing her in steam. She put the pot on the table without looking at Beris, and bustled to a breakfront, where she spent far too long selecting the teacups she always used. The cups clattered on the table beside the pot and at last she sat down.

"He's known all along I've been in the city?"

"He follows the news of the legions." She reached across the table and took his hands in hers. "Beris, look at me. You didn't really come here to share his grief; I see that, and you should, too. You came here to share yours."

Beris clutched at her work-hardened hands and gazed down at them, red from the steam, through misty eyes. "He was my father's brother," he said. "My grief is my father's grief."

"No, Beris. You are your father's grief. You are the grief he lives with every day of his life. You are the part of him he has lost and cannot forget. When you went away, the life went out of him." She disengaged one of her hands and wiped her eyes. "He has been a ghost these four years. When he heard his brother was dead, he did not wail and keen. He celebrated, Beris. He celebrated, for he knew he would be with Grivas soon."

Beris looked up into her almond eyes, anguish twisting his face. "You told me it was right to leave. Are you now telling me it was wrong? Are you telling me I am my father's death?"

She squeezed his hand. A tear rolled down her face. "No. Leaving was the right thing. Fathers may live through their sons, Beris, but no son should live for his father. Had you stayed, I fear the two of you would hate each other now."

"He hates me now, at least."

She pulled her other hand away and checked the progress of the tea. "A little weak," she said. "But we need it even so." She poured them each a cup and waited for him to sip first. Beris knew that nothing more could be said until the second cup was poured.

Aymara set down her second cup after a single sip. "Your father doesn't understand you, Beris," she said, putting her hand gently on his arm. "That scares him. He fears the Eda because he doesn't understand them, either. He lost his wife to them, and then his son, and now his brother. His fear may seem like hate, but he doesn't hate you. You remind him of everything he thinks the Eda have done to ruin his life. He won't forgive them, and that means he can't forgive you. Can you understand that?"

Beris shook his head vigorously. "But we didn't do anything to him."

Aymara chuckled. "Did you hear what you just said? 'We.' That's his point, Beris, the part that makes any sense. He feels you've rejected him by going back to Etavo. Not only him, but his family, his people, his profession, his gods -- his whole world. And when you say 'we' didn't do anything to him, or when you say you grieve Grivas because he was your father's brother and not because he was anything to you -- when you say things like that, it's easy to think your father's right."

A tear sprang up in Beris's eye. "Oh, Aymara," he said. "That's not true. Grivas was dear to me; you know that."

Aymara nodded. "Yes, I know that. But you loved Grivas for who he was and what he did, not because he was your uncle."

Beris bit off his protest, the General's words fresh in his mind. Grivas was not his uncle. His uncle was Lanos ng'Ako, Clan-leader of Etavo, not some garun trader. He flushed at this casual dismissal of dear old garrulous Grivas, bearer of gifts, teller of tales, who taught him rope tricks and double-entry accounting and bawdy Southern drinking songs. Grivas was not his uncle, he told himself again, sternly. No, but Grivas was much that his father should have been.

Beris lowered his head and a tear splashed into his tea. "I will miss him," he said.

Aymara reached across the table and cupped his cheek in her rough red hand. "There," she said. "Now the grief is yours." She filled Beris's teacup and her own and sat back, watching him for a time.

Beris let the tears roll down his face. They were honest tears, and honorable; they would dry in long crooked streaks of mourning. They ought to be traced over in yellow ochre, but that would have to wait. He sipped his tea, letting the hot sweetness of it soothe his throat and wrap around his heart.

When at last he set down his empty cup, Aymara quickly filled it. "Now," she said. "Tell me what you've been doing these last four years."

For the rest of that pot of tea and all of another, Beris told her about the Legion, about the Burning Wind and the men he dealt with every day. He started slowly, unsure of what she might want to hear, and of what she might understand. He soon decided that she wanted to hear everything, and probably understood it, too. When at last he ran dry, and the pot was dry as well, she leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thank you, Beris. Now you'd better go see to your men. You've a long journey ahead." She took him by the hand again and led him back through the parlor and into the shop.

Beris's helmet sat on the workbench, freshly brushed and burnished, and beside it lay a coil of leather. Beris unrolled the coil and beheld a belt as wide as his fist and half again as long as his arm. It was as supple as silk, and on the face as glossy, the color of the roan mare he had had as a boy in the North. Along the belt from left to right ran a herd of wild horses in flight. There must have been fifty of them, each distinct, so cunningly worked that Beris gasped, almost hearing the thunder of hooves, the frightened whinny of the young mares, the reassuring trumpet of the stallion. The herd was fleeing in good order, led by the queen with the foals in the center among the other mares and the adolescent males protecting the flanks. In the rear, his mane streaming forward in the wind, the proud, powerful stallion peered over his shoulder at whatever pursued them, the muscles of his neck standing out like cords. An unmarked span from the figured silver tang at either end, perpendicular to the herd to hang upright when the belt was worn, reared the black silhouette of a warhorse, rampant -- the totem of Clan Etavo.

Beris looked up in wonder at Aymara. "He made this? It's beautiful."

She nodded, smiling down at the belt. "He has a great talent."

"It's almost like he was there."

Aymara laughed. "He was."

"Oh? When?"

Aymara pursed her lips, thinking. "Before you were born, I'd say."

Beris nodded. Of course his father had been in the North; his mother had certainly never come south. But still, that his father would have seen the flight of a wild herd surprised him; that his father remembered it well enough after more than twenty years to render it so faithfully, so lovingly, surprised him even more. The Clans, on this side of the border at least, had little to do with wild horses these days; Beris himself had seen only one such herd, and it had been much smaller, a dozen or so horses in all, half of them young and all of them ragged and gaunt from lack of forage. Even so, he remembered the excited thrill running through his veins, his heart pounding with the hooves, his own breath whickering and snorting with the stallion's. Though perhaps unimpressive to those who had seen the magnificent herds of the past, numbering in the hundreds, they said, this small herd -- this feyadin of horses -- still stirred something deep within him, something as wild and untamed as the horses themselves, that yearned to fly with them across the trackless grasslands, tasting the wind and straining for the stars. Still, he was surprised to think that his father -- Southerner that he was, garun that he was -- might have felt something similar.

Beris coiled the belt slowly, reverently, unwilling to hide the magnificent herd. He started to return it to the workbench, but Aymara laid a hand on his arm.

"Take it," she said. "For the widow. Give it to her, Beris." She patted his arm and turned back to her kitchen. "Your father understands more than he thinks."

Beris nodded. "Good-bye, Aymara," he said, and with the coiled belt in one hand and his bright helmet in the other, he left his father's shop and went to ready his feyadin.