Shurik sighed. “I can remember the taste of freshly caught Peral River fish,” he said, his expression turned to some distant memory. “Juicy, succulent, and flaky, cooked on a slow fire with lemon juice, pepper, and turmeric. We used to eat it with steamed rice and fried onions.”
“Could be the last taste you remember,” teased Kyra. “I can feel the elders’ eyes on us right now.”
Shurik scrambled up and hurried back to the camp without a word. Kyra suppressed a grin. He would find it difficult to misbehave on this journey.
Three hours later they were on their way again, Kyra wincing as she eased herself into the saddle once more.
Dusk lengthened the shadows of the camels on the sand. The sky burned a fiery orange as the sun sank and the wind rose. There was nothing all around but a sea of sand. Kyra prayed that the wind would not keep up all night. It had been cold enough inside a tent with a stove; what would it be like to sleep out in the open, exposed to the bitter night? They had not brought any real shelter with them; Aram had been surprised when she asked. They had a couple of stoves, but the fuel was too precious to waste on anything but cooking and brewing tea.
Hours later, when a yellow sliver of moon hung low in the sky and Kyra was just about ready to topple off her camel, dignity be damned, Barkav called for a halt behind a vast, curving dune.
“Dinnertime,” he said, dismounting and smiling as if they were at a feast. The men gave a cheer. Kyra slid off her camel, numb with fatigue.
Aram lit the stove. Kyra knelt in front of it and held her hands out to the flickering flames. How strange they must look—a small circle of life in the vast, empty darkness of the desert.
“Tell me,” she said, “what do we do if the wind really gets going tonight? Like in the spring when it can blow the tents away?”
Aram glanced at her, his face unreadable. “We die,” he said, and put a pan of water on the stove.
So much for trying to make conversation. Kyra ignored Aram after that, merely thanking him for the cup of tea he gave her. She drank quickly; they all did. At that temperature, the tea would have become cold and useless in half a minute.
Shurik lit the second stove and Barkav himself made the stew. He tossed in potatoes and onions with the millet, joking and laughing as if they were not in the middle of the most godforsaken place in Asiana. Kyra told him about the Ferghana Valley, the beauty of its tumbling streams, the wooded slopes and wild horses. Even Ghasil and Ishtul unbent sufficiently to ask her about the system of teaching at the Order of Kali, murmuring to each other at the similarities, and exclaiming at the contrasts. The biggest difference, of course, was the wyr-wolf hunts of Kali. The vicious beasts, ubiquitous in the fertile valley and uplands of Ferghana, were absent in the desert. It was the biggest plus point of living there that Kyra could think of.
As Kyra described the hunt in which she had ridden and the massive wyr-wolf she had killed, the men grew quiet. Finally, sensing that something was amiss, her words petered out and she looked at Barkav, questioning. Had it sounded like she was boasting?
“Tell me, Kyra,” said Barkav. “Why does your Order hunt wyr-wolves? Is it for sport?”
“Certainly not!” Kyra was shocked. “Wyr-wolves are dangerous. They aren’t a bit like ordinary wolves. They can kill and carry off a grown man, never mind a small child. They plague the villages of the Ferghana, especially during winter when game is scarce.”
“Why don’t you tell her?” said Barkav to Aram. “Tell her the story about Zibalik’s wolves.”
Aram scowled at the stove. A few moments passed before he started to speak, his voice hesitant at first, and gathering confidence as his story progressed:
“Did you never wonder why they are called wyr-wolves? It was Zibalik who named them so: Zibalik, the founder of Khur and the first Marksman of Asiana. He wanted to learn whatever he could from all the Orders of Asiana before establishing his own, and he first heard the lore of dangerous wolf-beasts from the Markswomen of Kali. But it is said that he understood what they were only when he left the Ferghana Valley and set off to seek the Order of Zorya in the far north.
“The Zoryan Markswomen played a cruel game with Zibalik; perhaps it was a test. They evaded him for months, leaving tantalizing trails across the bogs and through the forests. As winter darkened the days and stripped the trees, Zibalik began to despair. Snow covered the ground and the lakes froze. If he did not find the Zoryans soon, Zibalik knew he would die. He was almost at the end of hope when the wolves first appeared.”
Aram paused and glanced at Barkav, his face uncertain, as if asking permission to go on. Kyra held her breath. Barkav inclined his head, and Aram resumed speaking:
“Zibalik said later that the wolves spoke to him in his dreams and told him where to find the Zoryans. Then he woke one bitter morning to find the wolves sitting in a circle around him. They gave him the warmth of their bodies and shared a buck that they had killed. They saved his life.”
“That’s impossible,” Kyra burst out, unable to contain herself. “The fangs of a wyr-wolf inject venom that causes paralysis. He’d have died if he’d eaten that buck. If you believe this story, it must be because you have never come face-to-face with a wyr-wolf yourself.”
Aram glowered and the elders bristled. Even Shurik frowned at her. Kyra squirmed and wished that she had held her tongue.
But Barkav only said, “Not everything that is passed on is to be taken literally. We believe the essence of it, as do the Zoryans, which is why we follow the injunction Zibalik laid on us to never raise our blades against wyr-wolves.”
Kyra frowned. Easy for them to say, living as they did in the Empty Place. Try telling a herder in the Ferghana who had lost his finest calves that wyr-wolves were not to be harmed.
But there was something else Aram had said that she didn’t understand. “That doesn’t explain why Zibalik named them wyr-wolves, though,” she said.
Shurik spoke fast, before anyone else could: “‘Wyr’ means ‘man’ in the ancient tongue. By giving the wolves this name, Zibalik recognized them as equal parts wolf and human.”
Barkav gave a slight smile of approval. Ghasil snorted and muttered, “Show-off.”
Kyra hid a grin at Shurik’s expression and didn’t ask further questions when the topic changed to the Zoryan style of fighting. Although she was curious to know more about Zibalik, she suspected that she would hear more malarkey about how wonderful the wyr-wolves were. The men of Khur were a credulous lot, to believe such a tall tale.