Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

32. The First Vision of the Past

When Anabelle had described her vision in the Mnemosyne, she had mentioned the overpowering excitement at the sight of the ancient horse-riders.

For Volya, his first glance into the past wasn't like that. His chest hollowed out. Foreboding obscured the horizon and the edges of his vision with billowing mist. Russet horses rushed into that frame, splotching to red whenever a ray of the setting sun hit them. The riders' clothes had an earthy tint. Volya couldn't distinguish their features, but their piled up hair and faces were streaked with ochre.

Ochre is blood of Earth, the color of dried blood, the familiar voice said. In this dream it wasn't disembodied. It was a cloud in the shape of a wolf-head. Its jaws moved as it spoke, and the voice itself shook the sky.

Volya had never shuddered like that before, even when he was awake.

His glance snapped to a group of fleeing women and children, drawn by a different sort of dread.

The fugitives numbered more than a hundred, he guessed. No lamentations filled the air—they were saving their breath. He didn't need to hear the keening to comprehend their despair. Their faces loomed clear before him, one after another, in the distorted reality. Only the highest grade of danger, only the irrecoverable loss contorted features this badly.

A squat woman, with a heavy jaw and thick braid, loped around the group, herding her mates closer, whenever the line stretched out. Either to berate or encourage, her arms swept towards him— No, not him, this was nonsense. She had been dead for millennia.

If not him, then whom? Volya looked around to find a man watching the desperate group right next to him. So the woman was gesticulating to call upon this very important ancient dude. What a relief... he didn't think his mind could take being a player in this ancient drama.

Behind the man, who Volya immediately christened Shaman, stretched a placid floodplain. An island with oak trees rose from the river, with a welcoming beach marked by gray boulders. One of them was carved into the semblance of a pregnant woman, another was a huge circle. The carvings looked to be ancient... ancient for these people of yore, that is, not just Volya.

The Shaman leaned heavily on his staff. The master-carver turned each knot on the wood into a cavorting wolf. A larger wolf-head snarled from the top of the staff, its eyes inset with black and yellow agate. The effect of the natural wavy patterns on the gem was basically psychedelic. Volya croaked and tore his gaze from it. There were more important things to see!

A handful of ash smeared the wolf's wooden maw, a handprint. Another handprint, less smothered, sat on the Shaman's cheek. The fingers on it looked too long for a human hand. A dotted trek tipped each finger, as if left by talons. The Shaman's eyes... yes, Anabelle was right: Volya felt like he was looking in the mirror.

The patchy clothes hang on the Shaman's lean frame, but this was leanness of youth, not privation or the shrinkage of old age. A stuffed beast head glared from atop of his human head. It was tied under his chin with the boneless paws, the rest of the pelt cloaking the man's shoulders and back. The dead wolf's teeth flashed white; blood-red paint covered its claws in a sick imitation of manicure; both shades contrasted starkly with the black fur.

Volya squinted trying to decide if it looked like the monster attacked the Shaman and was in the process of swallowing him whole or if the Shaman was a two-headed monster himself.

A wolf-man... a werewolf... if that was what werewolf meant, a man wearing a beast's skin, well, that wasn't so bad.

"Bzzt. Guess again," the wolf-head-in-the-clouds mocked.

More wolves—these ones of flesh and blood—circled the Shaman's ankles, brushing against him and sniffing the gruesome outfit. The beasts scowled, but made no efforts to tear into the man. At first Volya even thought they could be dogs, but their size, longer legs and concave stomachs gave them away. Their fangs snapped at the air more readily than any dogs'. Or maybe they simply snapped closer to Volya's ethereal presence in his lucid dream than any dog had done before.