Call of the Wolf (The Kohrinju Tai Saga) Read online

  I was more concerned with watching my momma than what she was asking. She opened her eyes carefully as I asked, “What’s wrong, momma?”

  She bit her lip and glanced around, apparently relieved about something, she didn’t say what, but she was sweating a lot, and this time it was I who brushed the hair out of her face.

  I caught her smile as I said, “I love you momma. It will be okay.”

  We sat there for a few moments and she closed her eyes again and replied, “Yes, Komain, one day it will all be okay.”

  Brushing my nose with a little smirk, she asked me again, “Do you remember what a … Tell … Singer is?”

  Thinking for a minute, suddenly I beamed and said, “They sing, momma, they sing and say things …”

  Still in a hush-hush, my momma began to chuckle and said, “Yes, yes … that’s exactly what they do. I want you to listen carefully, okay?”

  I nodded my head in earnest, as I knew she was about to tell me something important and exciting.

  “A Tell Singer, like Puhtnam Jai, is a very special elf who keeps the old lore and history secrets of times past. Sometimes they travel all over just to learn one little bit of history, but it’s a very important job.”

  “Why, momma?”

  “Well, because when something special happens somewhere, lots of times there is no one around who can write down what happened, so important details are forgotten. Even if stories are told, the stories often change with the teller. Why, I know the stories which weren’t written down for two hundred years after they had happened, and the happening wasn’t even close to the written history. It took me-, it took the Tell Singer a whole season to uncover the truth.”

  “How did the Tell Singer do it, momma? Was it magic?”

  My momma pondered and brushed some dirt off of my tunic before saying, “A good Tell Singer has skills, ways to learn things that most people may call magic. But the …”

  “What happens then, momma?” I asked excitedly.

  “Sh-h-h … let me finish.” She held her finger in front of her lips. When I nodded she continued, “But the most important thing is preserving the knowledge. That’s where the singing comes in, but it is a very special singing.” My momma got up close to my ear and whispered as if we were sharing yet another secret and said, “The Ghahn N’hael is a special language in which, when a song is formed, it can never be changed. Therefore the words can never be misconstrued or the meaning lost.”

  Drawing back, she asked, “Do you understand, my son?” Her eyes had a certain twinkle, and I tried hard to think about what she had just said. I believed I understood and gently nodded.

  “You see, even when things are written down, sometimes an enemy can come along and conquer, or beat and take over, the people of the place where the history was written down. Because the new people want history to say what they want it to say, they will write it all over their own way, and the first history is often destroyed. Then the truth is often lost …”

  “Unless a Tell Singer goes and finds it, right momma?”

  My momma smiled, “Yes, Komain, that is correct.”

  I creased my head in intense thought, “Momma?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can’t that be dangerous? Does a Tell Singer have to fight bad people?”

  There was a long pause and I thought I saw her lip tremble as she looked away for a moment, then rubbed her eyes. My momma couldn’t look at me directly when she said, “Yes, my son, it can be very dangerous. Sometimes they … sometimes they even die.” Another long pause as she glanced around the room and looked at one of the Dream Catchers, then she looked back at me and said, “Tell Singers have to be very brave. There are lots of bad people out there, and some are even elves, who don’t want the real histories to be found out or told.”

  Sitting there in our quarters, we held each other’s hand and never before had I felt any stronger bond of love with my momma than right then. I asked gently, but I was suddenly excited because I thought I was learning something new, a secret about my beloved momma and a part of her life I had never heard before, “Momma … are you a Tell Singer?”

  Again, I saw moisture in her eyes as she smiled an emotional smile. Then she said the most precious words I have ever heard, “I am your momma, my little blue eyes …” She brushed my hair with her fingers, “… and that is the most important thing in the world to me.” She took me into her arms, held my head, and as I held her back she rocked back and forth and said, “I love you so much … I love you Komain. I am so-o-o proud to be your momma.”

  “I love you too, momma.”

  We stayed like that long into the night, and me? With my eyes closed and a smile on my face I kept thinking to myself, ‘My momma’s a Tell Singer, the greatest Tell Singer in the whole world, and she’s all mine.’ It was my own personal secret.

  Chapter 4

  ________________________

  “HEY, SPIKE-EARS … come here you little slink!”

  Four boys were chasing me and I was running and dodging as fast as I could around snow covered plows, cultivating tools and a tool shed. Two months after I had turned twelve the drifts were high, and I had explored perhaps a bit too far for my own good. We were on the backside of a heavy snowstorm and I had been struck with cramped-quarter fever. My momma was busy in the cow barn helping Barlan with an injured bull, so I decided to go hunting me some trolls.

  Well, I found me a troll in the guise of a pock-faced boy who had more than once whopped me in the head with a thrown rock. I easily traced his way to the other side of the main keep’s wall, and there I lay in wait for the perfect ambush with a well made snowball dipped in water. He showed his face around a tool shed and I let fly from thirty-five feet away. Bango! I marked him right in the ear and I let out a whoop of excitement.

  The trouble is, I didn’t think through my plan. All I could figure was getting that boy back, I forgot he was always surrounded by at least two or three friends or cousins. What was worse was they were plantation kids, I mean, they weren’t slaves.

  One saw me nail my troll and pointed at me, and then they all started running at me. All were about eleven or twelve years old, and they were screaming at me. Remember, I was the same age in years, but the size of a human boy maybe six or seven years old.

  Like I’ve said before, I was fast, but we were in the snow and it slowed me down considerably. Ducking in and out around snow covered equipment I could see I might have made it, but then I barked my shins against a buried wagon tongue and went head first into a snowdrift.

  “Get him, Lexin, get him!” I heard the boys shriek when I raised my head up to see.

  I floundered in the snow trying to get up and was just about to gain foot purchase when my troll, Lexin, did a flying tackle against me and knocked me back down into the snow. The punches came as he punctuated every blow, “I … got … you … you … damn … slink …” Trying with all I had to fight back, he was much too big and his buddies then joined in.

  “Let’s brand him!” One boy yelled.

  “Yeah!” I heard another say.

  Lexin ordered, “Colsti, help me drag him to the wall.”

  I think it was Colsti who in turn told one of the others, “Phaul, go find a rod to brand his ass with.”

  “Lexin, Lexin, let’s do his face,” the other said with a cackling giggle.

  Lexin and Colsti started yanking me about and I heard them all laugh as I fought frantically to keep from being dragged to the shed wall. Lexin’s face displayed cruel humor as he grabbed me by the hair and said, “Yeah, you slink …” then he spit in my face and added, “… How’re you gonna like my brand on your cheek?”

  Phaul came out of the shed with a piece of rod and Lexin, who seemed to be in charge, ordered the other boy, “Jess, stir up that fire pot over there and set us one up. It don’t have to be big, but hurry, it’ll be dinner time and we gotta wash up.”

  As Lexin was running his mouth I almost broke free and he and Colst
i both yelled and secured me again, this time bodily picking me up and slamming me face first against the shed wall.

  It was then I heard a deep voice bellow so loud you could have heard it across the whole grounds, “Wait-to-hoy!” I could make out a distinct sneer in the angry voice, but I couldn’t yet see the speaker, “What are you scodgers about? What …?” And then I could make out a horse snorting and the hold Lexin had on me released; as I half fell I looked up to the new voice.

  The man must have been older than the mountaintop, but the instant I saw that horse my thoughts went immediately to my nightmare. The horse was huge and almost black, but with a deep red tint reflecting from the sunlight. Its mane, tail and both hind legs up to the hocks were the color of cream toughed with fire, and just as I looked, it reared up on its hind legs and practically danced as it pawed the air with its forefeet and bugled as if a challenge to do battle. The color of his hind legs blended with the snow and in my mind I envisioned the man and horse as having come right up from below, and the horse was still half in and half out.

  While the horse was on two legs the man’s voice boomed again and my attention was averted to him; the world went surreal as I saw his weathered and ancient face contorted with rage; his eyes like twin points of flaming blue ringed by the whites of his eyeballs. In his right hand he brandished what looked like a twisted, black walking stick with an almost white knob grown out from one end, pointing it at the boys holding me; he made me wonder if this was what a demon looked like as he demanded in a voice that made you quiver to the bone, “Let – that – boy – go!”

  Phaul fell to the ground scrambling to get away as the stallion echoed his rider’s temperament and hammered the ground with his forefeet. Lexin backed up to the wall and stood there transfixed with fear. Colsti was literally quaking in his feet while still holding me, although not with any authority. I have no clue what happened to Jess.

  The horse spun around in a left-wise circle and I saw the whole figure of the man. On his left side hung a wide sword sheath, unlike what I had ever seen any of the other plantation men wear, his boots were highly polished black and covered his calves and were folded down from the top, also different from anything I had seen. I think his leggings were made of tight leather, but I couldn’t be sure, and his black overcoat was split in the back with a high, folded collar and looked like a cape, the way the wind was blowing it around.

  The man’s hair was shoulder long, flying wild in the breeze and almost gave him a majestic appearance; on his head was a medium brimmed black hat with the edges somewhat curled to give an almost triangular shape, and a bushy feather plumed from the left of his hat-band. I thought I saw a golden earring in his left earlobe and his mustache and goatee was painfully neat and trim.

  As old as he was, I thought he should have fallen from the saddle, but it was as if he and the horse were one creature.

  In the brief instant the horse completed his circle; Phaul had dropped his rod and ran for the main keep. Lexin ran around the shed with skating feet and must not have been watching where he was going, because I heard him run head on into the open shed door.

  My own terror of this man on his horse boiled through my blood and I tore from Colsti’s grasp and bolted for my quarters. I heard the man’s voice thundering and was sure he was eating Colsti as he stood there, but I had no idea what he said and didn’t care.

  As brave as I thought I was, I was still just a little fellow, and I had never seen anything like that man before, or heard such words of power and violence. The door of our quarters was open and I cleared the steps with a flying jump; bolting inside I saw my momma turning around to look and heard her say, “Komain, where have you …?”

  She couldn’t finish before I plowed into her and grabbed hold of her waist as I trembled something fierce.

  “Komain …” she held me and was clearly alarmed, “Talk to me, Komain, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s … it’s … I saw it, momma … I saw it …” I said, wild eyed and too scared to even cry. I have to admit I was fairly traumatized.

  My momma tried to pull me loose, I’m sure to talk to me, but I’m here to tell you that I wasn’t having any part of it.

  And then I heard hoof beats riding up to our quarters, first at a brisk trot, then a slow walk. It was the first time that had ever happened, I hadn’t known a horse to come within a hundred rods of our quarters and I felt the terror renewed through my soul. It was the Horseman from Hades, I was sure, coming to take me back to wherever he dropped me from in my dream, and I was now sure it was he who was in my nightmare.

  Now, Hades was a word my momma never used, and you couldn’t have gotten me to tell you where I first heard it, but it didn’t matter to me. More than the big, dark horse with the fire on its mane and tail, it was the look in that man’s eyes and the rage on his face. But it wasn’t just me, Lexin and Colsti and the others had felt it too.

  I was standing there wrapped in my momma’s arms, just inside the doorway, as the horse and rider walked up and I could feel this eerie silence and a strange change in the manner of my momma. Something was very different, something I had never felt from my momma before.

  For several awkward moments we three, or I guess I should say we four, maintained our pose, and then the man spoke, slowly and respectfully, in such a way I could not remember ever hearing anyone speak to her before, “I … I … ah …” The voice was strong, but strangely gentle, so different from only minutes before, was he stammering while trying to find the right words to say?

  Again he tried to speak, “… the …” I heard a rustle of material against material and the sound of creaking leather, was he turning in his saddle and pointing the way he, we had come from? “… there were some lads waylayin’ the boy, there. I wanted to make sure he was altogether well.”

  Scared as I was, of a sudden my curiosity got the better of me and I slowly turned to see. The man was clearly in my sight, but only for a moment, as my attention became riveted on the great beast standing sideways but three rods from our door. This creature was standing still, his left side to us, and all at once he was terrible to see but magnificent as well.

  Clutching hard on my momma’s tunic I stared at the perfect musculature, the manner the stallion held his head, and that black bridle with the embossed decorations. I wanted to look at that saddle, too, and those skirted covers on the place where the feet went … I had no idea what stirrups were … but I just knew if I took my eyes off of that face he would turn around and eat me.

  There! The horse rolled his eyes and looked at me, and then turned his head to look better … and … and … he was sticking his nose out to, to taste me-e-e … “MomMA!” I screamed. In a desperate panic I again grabbed my momma, and together we spun around as she was able to drop beside me, and holding me close we once more were facing the man and horse.

  “I have you, Komain … I’m right here! I’m not letting go!” She said as she held me close.

  The man and horse were still there as my momma held her face to mine and got me to look in their direction. That big horse was still looking at me but it looked like the man was keeping his head pulled in, all the while saying, “E-e-easy, e-e-easy there Dahnté; the lad doesn’t know you’re bein’ friendly.”

  The old man somehow looked different; he still sat way straighter in that black saddle than I thought he should be able to, but instead of fire, his eyes now shown some kind of warmth and there was a smile on his face that was almost soft; I didn’t understand.

  I got the feeling the man wasn’t sure what to do or say, and in my extreme youth I could sense he was used to being in charge. But, who was he? Why had I never seen him before? Clearly, my momma knew this man. Was I wrong, or did she seem to like him, this human?

  Catching my eye, the old man spoke to me; yes, to me, and I was afraid, only his words were a blend of strength and tenderness, “It’s easy in the wind, there lad, Dahnté is my good mate. We found each other in the Kohntia Mountains no
t two years ago; he alone, and I injured.”

  Without realizing it, I knew he wasn’t just talking to me, but it was me he was looking at. But how could he be so mean and cruel looking before, but now he seemed so pleasant; his voice was so soft sounding, and at the same time potent.

  “It was said you had been slain.” My momma’s words surprised me.

  The man thought of it before offering, “And so it was, I thought myself scuttled, for sure.” He gave her a long glance. It was like they were talking among themselves without words. What were they saying?

  Dahnté arched his neck and pawed the ground; I clung a little harder on my momma.

  The old man looked back at me and patiently said, “He won’t hurt you. Dahnté is a Battle Mount … he’s trained to fight … and to do whatever I ask him. Watch this …”

  I watched in fascination as without saying a word, hitting him, or anything, the old man seemed to sit straight in the saddle with reins in one hand and that cane in the other as Dahnté first came to a complete stop and held his head and tail high. Then Dahnté started to high step in place, next he held one foreleg up in the air, then he skipped and held the other one up.

  When he rose up on his back legs I rammed my face into my momma’s shoulder, but she said, “Komain, watch … look at this …” And the stallion stayed on his hind legs and held one foreleg way up, and then the other, and then changed again. When he came down, he stepped sideways three times, then to the other side three times, always rising his knees way up in the air.

  Dahnté walked in a figure eight, then in a circle, then he trotted in a circle holding his head way high and tail looking like a flag. The old man never touched the saddle or anything the whole time; I just knew if I got stuck up on a saddle like that I would have to hold onto everything. And then the old man looked over at us and winked.