Read Wolf's Blood for Free Online

so, the weather found its way inside. Many of the structures remained sound outside, but inside the shell, ceilings had collapsed, walls had crumpled. Ellabrana could often tell if a floor was safe to walk upon or whether the supporting pillars were damaged. Things like that …”
    Urgana paused and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye without seeming to notice.
    “Later, when rebuilding began. Ellabrana did a great deal. She could convince mortar to dry more evenly or seal a crack in a foundation stone. Her handiwork is all around us.”
    “And you?” Firekeeper asked. “Did you build, too?”
    Urgana began to shake her head, then nodded.
    “I did some building, but the Once Dead who ruled—let me call them the Spell Wielders, as they did themselves, marking themselves out as special even among the Once Dead—the Spell Wielders made plain that they accepted me here on sufferance. If I did not make myself useful, then they would make me useful, and for them, the greatest use to which any of the non-magical could be turned was as a source of blood for their disgusting spells.”
    Firekeeper felt her lips drawn back from her teeth in a snarl of revulsion. Beside her, Blind Seer shook with a belly-deep growl.
    Urgana did not need to be told the reaction was not directed toward her. She even relaxed as she had not since she had admitted her perceived guilt in helping discover the function of the Nexus Islands.
    “So I made myself of use,” Urgana continued, “even though the use they had for me was disgusting to me.”
    Derian frowned. “They didn’t …”
    Urgana reached out and gave his hand a motherly pat. “It’s not what you’re thinking, young man, although I won’t say that I didn’t deal with that, as well, especially when I was younger and more attractive. No, what they wanted from me was my skills as a researcher. By this time, I could read half a dozen languages, and make my way fairly well in several more. I’ve rather quickly glossed over just how many years of research and experimentation went on before we opened that very first gate, but I was a young woman when we started, and seeing grey in my hair before I first stepped on the Nexus Islands.”
    “Is research so bad?” Firekeeper asked.
    The wolf-woman thought she knew what Urgana meant, but also knew that she could ask such questions and not be thought stupid. No one was ever quite sure just how much of human culture and motivations she understood. There were times, indeed, that Firekeeper knew Blind Seer was more sophisticated in his comprehension than she was.
    Urgana shook her head. “Child, research in itself is not wrong, but when you know as I did that the research will be turned to destruction or exploitation of the weak, then there is no joy in the work. Perhaps if I had believed, as some of the Spell Wielders truly did, that the world would be improved with a return to the old ways. then I might have gone about my work with a lighter heart, but I knew that what I did was in defiance of Divine Retribution, that I was working against the will of the deities. I will not deny that there were times I thought of ending my life, but then Ellabrana would have felt guilty, and by the time Ellabrana had gone to the Divine Five, my sensibilities had been dulled.”
    “So you will not help us,” Firekeeper said. “not even when I tell you that we have no wish to conquest or fight. All we wish to know is where querinalo came from.”
    “Querinalo came from the deities.” Urgana said firmly. “That is all I know, and all I need to know. If I had remembered this when I was a brash young woman, then perhaps today I would not be a lonely old woman making my home on an island whose purpose I doubt and despise—but which is my home because I have no other.”
     
     
     
    THEY LEFT URGANA shortly thereafter and retired to Derian’s house near the stable. The morning had become afternoon, and a patio that took advantage of the pale spring