The Princess and the Wolf (The Princess and the Hound) Read online

  Did her father love her, Dagmar? Or did he love the fact that she was as close as he could be to Ina Dagmar? It seemed a cruel thing to believe of her father, for he had never been less than kind to her. But there were moments when she had caught him staring off into the distance, into the woods where it was said the infant princess had been taken. And she knew that he had not forgotten that Ina Dagmar might still live, and that Dagmar was only holding her place while she was gone.

  “Dagmar, this is Lord Morlieb,” said King George.

  She had not met the man before, though this was hardly a surprise. This celebration was a huge affair, and every minor noble and some merchantmen in the kingdom had been invited to attend, as well as those from other kingdoms King George wished to improve relations with.

  Lord Morlieb had dark hair that curled at the bottom, where it brushed against his neck. His eyes were the green of pine trees in the middle of winter. His skin was darkly tanned and he wore a rough cloak over simple trousers and tunic. His hands were well callused, when he held out one to take Dagmar’s.

  Then he kissed her hand gently, and she could smell the horse and sweat and grass on him.

  “As lovely as you are rumored to be,” said Lord Morlieb. “I am delighted to meet you.”

  “And I to meet you,” said Dagmar, glad she could speak without stuttering for once.

  “Lord Morlieb is an envoy from the south. He brings the good will of the king of Tirol with him. And the hopes for a treaty between our peoples, so that we can share our understandings of magic.”

  “Oh, then you openly speak of magic?” asked Dagmar. Kendel was now far more open than other of the other kingdoms. In Sarrey, there were still places where the animal magic was punished with death, although that was changing as people streamed from Sarrey into Kendel. Kendel had shown the advantage of the animal magic being encouraged rather than threatened.

  “We do. Though our magic is not the great, wild magic that King George used to tranform one creature into the shape of another.”

  “That is in the past,” said King George. “I have only use the wild magic once, and I still I do not know if it came from me, after all, or from the forest itself.”

  “But that is the way of all magic. It does not come from inside of us. We are but a conduit for it. But there are some who are better conduits than others, depending on their characters and their willingness to sacrifice for the magic,” said Lord Morlieb.

  Dagmar had gone to a few lessons on magic, purely for the sake of proving to her father that she had no talent in that area. He had not forced her to do more than a perfunctory test.

  How different it would have been for the true princess, Ina Dagmar. Her father would have expected her to show great talent. Dagmar did not know if it would have been worse of better to have that pressure, and the hope of succeeding at it.

  “My magic allows me to command animals, but not to transform into them,” said Lord Morlieb. He ran a hand through the air and caught a tiny insect. He whispered to it in its own language, no more than a hiss here or there, and when he opened his hand, the creature held very still and Lord Morlieb could press it from side to side and it did not move.

  “Marvelous,” said King George. “I speak to animals in their own language, but they rarely allow me to command them. I find them to be a rather fractious lot, with their own intentions. Even when I try to explain to them the importance of what I have asked—they do not always agree. Rather like my own human subjects, I’m afraid.” He smiled.

  “Ah, well, these are very small things. Gnats do not have great minds. It is no great magic to be able to sway them. I’m sure that you could learn to do it if you tried, Your Highness,” said Lord Morlieb. “I could offer a lesson in the magic of my kingdom, if you would like. I hear you have a magic school here, so you must believe that teaching is valuable in the use of magic.”

  King George held up his hands. “I thank you, but no. That is not my gift. I take what magic gives me and do not demand more.”

  “Well, there is little I can do with such a gift. A party trick, no more than that. A paltry offering to a king—and his daughter princess.” He dipped his head in humility.

  “But since you mentioned the school, would you be willing to speak there, perhaps in the morning?” asked King George. “About your own gift and any others you have seen in your kingdom? There is so much we could learn from one another, I think, if only magic were to be spoken of freely. I am always interested in how the different magics fit together. It is my understanding that they all arise out of the bond that ties each species to the others. It is a way of reminding of us our origins, and them of their possibilities. Do you not agree?”

  “I see things—differently. But perhaps that would take more time than we have at present to discuss,” said Lord Morlieb.

  “Of course, of course. Now it is time for dancing.” King George bowed to Lord Morlieb and led Dagmar away.

  “Perhaps you could dance with him later this evening? Talk him into going to the school?” the king said to Dagmar.

  “If you wish it, Father,” said Dagmar. She had been taught to dance, but she did not take much pleasure in it. She did not like to be watched, every possible mistake observed and noted by others.

  “Well, then, my dear, I will dance the first with your mother. I think they are waiting for me,” he said, nodding to the other nobles.

  “I’m sure they are.” It might be Dagmar’s party, but the celebration was for the kingdom, not for her. There would be a few token favorites for the princess, but this was her chance to serve her kingdom, not the other way around.

  Being a princess was all about service, Dagmar knew. Her parents had taught her that from the first. Wearing a stiff gown, learning to dance when she did not care to, speaking to those she did not care to speak to—they were all part of her the role she had been given.

  Sometimes Dagmar wondered what her life would have been like if she had been left in the village where she was born. Would some other peasants have taken her in? Would she be happier there? Perhaps it was ungrateful to consider such things, but the thoughts came to her especially at a time like this.

  The king looked to his queen and offered her his arm. In his father’s time, it had been considered bad manners for the king to dance with his own wife, but when George was crowned, he would hear nothing of it. He danced with his wife and no one else. It was when he was not dancing that others in the kingdom had a chance to catch his ear. Besides, the whole kingdom enjoyed watching the king and queen on the dance floor together.

  Queen Marit was a fine dancer with a body that was still strong and lithe, despite her age. When she and the king touched each other, they seemed to fall into another world of fire and joy, a world that was only partially held within the walls of the castle. And when they danced, there was a feeling that spread through the castle, of warmth, of purpose, of fierceness. Some might call it an animal feeling, but it left all those watching breathless and wishing for more.

  When the king and queen had finished dancing, the players began a jig and others flooded the dance floor. Lord Morlieb bowed to Dagmar. “I am not as good a dancer as your father, but I would be honored if you would dance with me, Princess Dagmar.”

  “Thank you,” said Dagmar. She had taken the lessons, but she rarely felt anything in the music. She had never lost herself in it, nor felt that the music was a part of her, as her mother and father said.

  She moved to the dance floor and Lord Morlieb put a hand to her side and one around her shoulders.

  With the first note of music, Dagmar felt something new inside of her. She could feel her heart matching the beat of the music and she felt her feet dancing without her moving them consciously. How had that happened? She had never enjoyed dancing so much before.

  It seemed only a few breaths later before the music had ended, and she was still swaying in Lord Morlieb’s arms. He smiled at her and she caught a glimpse of white teeth that seemed a litt
le long for his mouth.

  So, he is not quite perfect, Dagmar thought to herself. It made her smile.

  “If I let go of you, do you think you will fall?” asked Lord Morlieb.

  Dagmar realized that she was still holding tightly to his waist.

  She blushed and let go, then stepped back.

  “It was not that I minded. It was only that there were people watching.” Lord Morlieb stepped back and nodded to the other nobles, all staring at the sight of the princess blushing happily at her own birthday celebration.

  “You are very kind,” said Dagmar.

  He raised a finger in mock warning. “Now you are flattering me.”

  “I never flatter,” said Dagmar seriously.

  “Never?”

  Dagmar shook her head.

  “And I daresay that makes you a better princess, doesn’t it? Your people know and trust you, do they not? They have known you for sixteen years and have forgotten your origins as you have.”

  “I never forget my origins,” said Dagmar, suddenly stiff again.

  “Oh?” said Lord Morlieb. “But why? You are every inch the princess now.”

  “I feel—I am not sure all agree with you.”

  “Then they are fools,” said Lord Morlieb. “And I shall prove it to them as often as I can dance with you while I am here.”

  “Will you be here long?” asked Dagmar, as Lord Morlieb led her back to her father’s side.

  “As long as is necessary,” said Lord Morlieb.

  “Necessary for what?” That had not been clear to Dagmar when her father had introduced them. He was from Tirol and he had magic that King George wished to know about. Was there more than that?

  “For the future of magic and our two human kingdoms,” said Lord Morlieb.

  Dagmar’s eyebrows rose. “That sounds very important, Lord Morlieb.”

  “It is. Oh, it is. But please, call me Rolf.”

  “Rolf,” said Dagmar and felt a little thrill at the sound of the name. She wanted to dance with him again very much. She wanted to have that feeling of oneness with the music once more.

  King George seemed pleased enough with the man, and the celebration went well. Dagmar knelt and received a tiny gold scepter from her father and was presented to the kingdom by her father. They received her with a roar as “Crown Princess Dagmar,” the heir to the throne.

  Dagmar’s eyes strayed to Lord Morlieb—Rolf. His smile at her made her feel a little dizzy. But when she looked at her mother, Queen Marit seemed displeased with Lord Morlieb and refused to come near enough even to be introduced to him.

  Rolf made a joke of it. “She doesn’t want to see you grow up,” he said. “She wants you to remain a child forever. If you are an adult, that makes her an old woman, and you know what the stories say of old women.”

  “No, what do they say?” asked Dagmar.

  “That they can only take back their lives if they steal it from their own young,” said Rolf.

  Dagmar laughed uneasily at that. “My mother isn’t like that,” she said.

  “She isn’t like other women, though, is she? Have you ever wondered if she has forgotten what it is like to be a hound? If she wishes she were a hound still?”

  “She is happy with my father,” said Dagmar. “And with me and her place in the kingdom.”

  “I’m sure that is so. I’m sure she would never willingly leave. Not even if she had a chance to be a hound again,” said Rolf with a tone that made it clear that he doubted it.

  When he was gone early in the morning and Dagmar went to bed, she could not stop thinking of him and the way she had enjoyed dancing with him. But it made no sense. She did not know if she liked him at all, the way he spoke to her and about her mother. But surely if he were dangerous, her father would have warned her.

  Chapter Two: True

  True was hunting a lynx that had been his nemesis for the last four summer seasons. True had almost caught it two seasons ago, but then the lynx had slithered out of his grasp, almost as if it had been able to turn into a snake and unroll his skin. The lynx had flipped up and mauled True’s face in the moment of surprise, and then the hound was too blinded by blood to see properly and give chase.

  The last two seasons, True had been wary, leaving the lynx be in most cases, following its spur only once, and then backing out of a dark cave he had never investigated before. He had felt terror and a sense of shame, and vowed late that same night that he would never show himself a coward again.

  None of his pack knew of his quest for the lynx. They did tease him about a “secret” that he had, but he never gave a hint as to what it was. Either he would die at the hands of the lynx or he would win a great victory and drag the body back with him to show his triumph.

  He was at the chase for the lynx again in that brief passage between dawn and dusk, when the sky was neither dark nor light, but a shade of gray. It was then that True saw the golden she-wolf. Her yellow coat stood out like a human fire and when True saw it, he forgot about the lynx until it made a sound like a hyena’s scream as the golden she-wolf leaped and caught it.

  True stared at the golden she-wolf, waiting for her to kill the smaller and now trapped lynx. But as he turned to the side, he saw another wolf beside the gold one. It was male, and a blue hue. It was larger than the golden she-wolf by a half again, and it looked older, in the certainty of its stride and its sinewy movement.

  The blue wolf flicked its head to the side and the golden she-wolf let go of the lynx.

  It skittered away, and True did not even think to see which direction it had gone in. He found he was suddenly far more interested in the pair of wolves.

  True had seen wolves only twice before. That had been in the time when he had left the forest, in his wandering years, before he had returned to the pack to prove himself as a full grown male. It had also been in the year after his father had died.

  Old Red had remained leader of the pack his whole life, but it had been more out of respect the last few months than out of strength. None of the other wolves of the pack had any wish to take Red from his place, and there were still some of the original wolves with whom he had built the pack to protect them.

  Since then, both Loyal and Lord had died. True’s mother Fierce and her dear friend, Unscarred, were still alive, still able to keep up with the pack. But Fierce was losing her eyesight and was left with only her sense of smell to guide her. It would not be long before the old generation was gone and True was all that remained of his parent’s heritage. He had to prove himself worthy to be the leader or he would leave the pack. He could not stay on at the sufferance of another. He had too much pride for that.

  The first time True had seen wolves had been in the south, where they had not been hunted so near to extinction. He had come across a pack of them running through the lesser mountains near the desert. They had been bushy-tailed, rangy animals, with broad foreheads and reddish coloring like his father’s and his own. They even allowed True to run with them for a while.

  But wolves were less social than hounds. They had their own language, but they had less to say, and they did not sing as hounds did. They might howl at the moon once or twice, but not as a pack, not in celebration of a beautiful night, or the turn of the seasons, or the birth of a new litter of pups. True found himself missing his home more than he expected, and took his leave.

  The second time he had seen a wolf had been to the north, in the snowy mountain peaks. It had not been a pack, but a single wolf, as white as the snow itself and difficult to see against the backdrop of white stones and white sky in storm. The wolf’s tail had been chewed to a nub and it swayed from side to side as if buffeted by the wind, even when it was still. The wolf looked ill, but when True approached it, it attacked him viciously. He had run from it, then later gone back and found it by the side of a stream, its sides panting, head down.

  True growled at it, and it lifted its head to snarl back, but the sound was pitiful. It was dying. True had seen th
at. He could have left it, but instead he attacked, not because he wanted to, but to give the wolf one last moment of true life, in battle.

  The final battle with the white wolf had left True with a wound on his side, but he had felt the pain gladly for the next several weeks, knowing that he had given an honorable death as a gift in return. If there were wolf packs in the north, he thought they must be farther from the humans in the south than he had traveled.

  Fierce had seen the wound and asked him about it. Eventually, True had told her the whole story of the wolf.

  “Did it speak to you at all? In the language of wolves or in the language of wild hound?” asked Fierce.

  “No.”

  “Did it seem—at all human to you?” she asked.

  It was a strange question, True thought. Why would a hound seem human? And so he asked.

  “Ancient wolves have deep magic,” said Fierce. “From the beginning of time.”

  “Magic for what purpose?” asked True.

  “For changing shape, if they wish. Or speaking to humans.”

  “A wolf? What would a wolf say to a human? And what other shape would a wolf wish to take?”

  Fierce smiled at him and then turned away with a look of pain. “Your father and I did not mind our time in another shape.”

  True remembered then that she had told him about when she and his father were human, but that was so long ago, and the thought of being human was nothing impressive to him. Humans were small, hairless, uninteresting.

  “Well, it is dead now,” said True.

  “Yes, so it is,” said Fierce. That had been two years ago and Fierce had not mentioned wolves to him since.

  Now that True saw these two wolves together, he followed after them, sniffing for the prints they left on the forest floor. It was a sweet smell, part hound and part danger.

  The two wolves skirted the edge of the forest and moved to the northern end, where there were huge rocks scattered as if dropped from a cloud above. Tress grew in crevices, but their roots were not deep enough to allow full height, so the forest petered out and became a rocky plain that even humans did not bother with, because it was of little use for their homes or for planting crops.