Night of the Wolf by Alice Borchardt Read Free Book Online Page A

ancient and sacred.
Around her the giant firs and pines blotted out even the stars above. There was no moon.
    Just as well the path was so deeply beaten; she could see nothing under the trees.
    At first the slope was gentle, but it swiftly grew steeper, climbing with a minimum of switchbacks toward the tree line. She wasn’t sure when the forest began to thin out, but gradually, as she climbed higher and higher, the sensation of walking in a cavern diminished as the trees became increasingly sparse and short, giving way, at last, to brush and then scattered wind-twisted dwarves. As she drew closer to the open, the wind began to bite alarmingly.
    Frost,
she thought.
There will be frost on the grass before dawn.
All at once she became aware she was walking across level ground. She stood in a tiny mountain meadow overlooking a deep gorge where the river ran. The grass was long and silken, gleaming like raw flax in the starlight.
    She remembered the girl’s words. No tame beast grazes there, only the deer, the mountain goat, and the chamois. Everyone has forgotten why. All they will say when they speak of it is “It’s bad luck” or “There’s not enough grass there to be worth the trouble and the trail is too steep. A fine cow or sheep might break a leg.”
    On one end of the meadow, a lump of dark granite crouched like a giant fist. Water bubbled from a brush-covered cleft in the stone near the top, fell from one ledge to another until it created a basin at the foot, then overflowed into the little creek that bubbled past Mir’s door.
    She paused to get her bearings and then walked forward carefully. The meadow ended on her right in a steep slope, rocky at first, then clothed in thick spruce and fir, and, finally, virgin pine forest near the river in the valley below. On her left stood a sheer cliff. Up and up it rose—steep, unclimbable—until it gave way to a series of rocky terraces leading to a snow-capped peak.
    Go to the spring, the girl had instructed her. Near the spring you will find the stair.
    As she approached the granite lump, she saw the hand- and footholds chipped out of the rock. Had the girl not called it a stairway, Dryas would have believed the small notches were simply natural features hollowed out over uncounted centuries by wind and rain.
    Dropping her pack on the ground, Dryas reached out and slid her hand into the first. She found it much deeper than it had appeared. She began to climb and became aware, to her chagrin, that there was something the child had not told her. The rude ladder led her around the giant granite boulder and out over the valley below.
    When the first handhold became a foothold, she found herself hanging over a sheer drop to the river at the bottom of the gorge. She pressed her breasts and stomach against the fissured stone. Her belly muscles quivered.
    Pride awakened. She was Dryas of the royal line. Guardian to queens and queen herself.
Yes, Dryas,
her common sense informed her,
but the girl is mad as a bull in rut and these hollows may not lead anywhere.
Yet, even as she thought that, she found herself impatiently fumbling for another handhold. When she placed her foot where her hand had been only a few moments before, she realized her left hand was sliding over a rock ledge. A moment later, she was over the top and resting on the flat of a tiny dell looking eastward.
    The dell was only thirty feet wide and qualified more as a large ledge, but it also supported the same thick growth of grass as the meadow below. Up so high, the wind seemed to blow without end. Sometimes a roaring blast, at others, a gentle breeze, but it never quite ceased, and in a few moments, her cheeks and fingers began to grow numb. The warmth of her exertion drained away and the cold crept in. Well, the girl said they were here. Where were they?
    The moon began to rise over a distant peak. By its light, as the builders intended, she saw the ellipse of white stones among the grass and the pale, flat