"One of us has to be given up," Fahree said. "You can see that, can't you?"
Loomahk could barely see anything. His eyelids were plastered together by need for sleep, by smoke, by welling tears he did not dare let fall.
Voortahn, Loomahk's packleader, tried to reason with him. "If no one comes forward to claim responsibility for the accident, the village authorities will come investigate. And then what? They will find the temple and destroy it, or they will find nothing and destroy our homes for spite. There are so few of us. If we fought, we'd be wiped out."
Smoke hung in the air like morning mist. It was mid-afternoon. Their patch of Gen-Re-Koh started burning the night before. The fires were all out now but the smoke would not leave.
"Let me be the one who is sacrificed," Loomahk begged. The fox met this idea with derision.
"Oh, yes. They would leave us alone then, would they? After meeting a wolf who admits playing with fire?"
Loomahk had gotten no sleep because his den, and the dens of his pack, were in the path of the flames. All the animals had managed to escape without serious injury, but the fire had spread to the village. There it trapped a whole family--man and wife, three children--suffocating them in their thatched house. The almost-tears were for them and for the one who had set the fire. It was an accident, if that mattered.
Voortahn spoke gently. "Loomahk, this is your home. It isn't hers. She shouldn't have been here at all."
The grey wolf had searched for Doe by firelight and at dawn and by the light of the sun crawling up into the sky. He searched Gen-Re-Koh and then even the village, where he learned of the deaths. He found her in his own den. Her hair was singed, as his was. She was shaking, a tree in a storm.
Fahree regarded him severely. "By bringing that woman into our midst, you have placed the temple in jeopardy. You will be punished for that. But Doe will be punished first, and by her own kind."
Doe had been mute at first. She just held up a stout, charred pine branch. After much gentle prodding (he had to know what happened before he spoke with his betters) he learned the whole of it. Ever since the failed attempt to bear the lightning-fire back to the temple a week back, she'd been puzzling over how to better the torches. Should the pine branches be coated in beeswax, or wrapped in cloth soaked in oil? She had her own hearth in Loomahk's den, but she wanted to test her torches secretly and surprise him. She took her improved torches to the temple, lit one by the sacred fire, and came back above ground with it. She tried to see how far she could carry it before it burnt out. But the torch burned too fast and hot, shedding fire and scattering it through leaves brown and cracked like old parchment, through the brush, through the whole forest.
Now Loomahk stood on the hillside by the creek with the leader of his pack and the leader of his worship. He had crooned Doe to sleep with assurances all would be well, all manner of things would be well. But he had gotten another wolf to stand guard outside the den, just in case. It was for her protection and for his--for the pack's protection, rather, and the temple's.
"What will Doe's punishment be, if she is brought to her village's authorities?" Loomahk asked.
"Her people will want death for death," Fahree answered.
Loomahk bowed his head. "Let me just ask one favor. Let me be the one who brings her in to the authorities. As you say--I was the one who brought her into this community; the blame for her presence rests on me. I should be the one to deal with the consequences."
His pack leader regarded him seriously. "You may do what you propose. Fahree will accompany you."
They would have asked Loomahk to do this if he had not volunteered, perhaps even forced him if he had resisted the job. But force was not necessary. Loomahk lived in a pack; he knew and accepted his place.
"Have you told her about the deaths in the village?" Fahree asked Loomahk as they approached his den.
"No."
"Good. Then she will not be suspicious. Have you thought of what we should say to get her to come with us?"
"It's up to you," Loomahk said miserably. "You are better at ruses than I am."
"Wake up, Doe."
She saw Fahree's grinning face as the world reassembled itself.
"I know you must think you have done something terrible. But spreading the fires of Re is never a crime."
"I did not mean to do it," Doe insisted.
He smiled down at her lovingly. "Then it was the will of Re working through you. You are a natural priestess, a missionary. You were born to bear witness to Re, and to spread Hawklion's fire not just to animals, but to your own kind. Will you accept this calling?"
"Preach to my people?" She had been ready for punishment, not for talk of vocations. This was mercy, except--going back to the village, to the place where she'd been exiled...She spotted Loomahk in the corner and turned to him with a helpless look.
"Be strong, Doe." There was a catch in his voice.
She nodded, feeling his strength in her. "If it is Re's will, I'll do it. Walk with me?"
"Of course."
Doe and Loomahk and Fahree walked westward together out of Gen-Re-Koh, the woman with her arm on the wolf's shoulder, the fox on his other side. A wind had come up. It brushed the smoke against them. Doe said it felt like the wind was blowing through her, "right through my skin, like I'm not really here." She smiled at Loomahk's silence. "Hard to explain."
"You are a ghost before you've even died, Doe," Fahree joked. Doe felt a shudder ripple through Loomahk's body. With a sudden premonition, she stopped and knelt at his side.
"Tell me what's wrong," she whispered.
They looked into each other's eyes for a very long time. Loomahk closed his at last. "I was just thinking about how cruel Re's will can seem sometimes. Asking you to go back to the people who cast you out, even to the priest whom you loved."
"I can face him," Doe assured the wolf. "He treated me like I had committed an unforgivable act. He left me lonely when I didn't deserve it. But I know what I'd say to him now. I'd say, 'You are not the final authority on forgiveness.'"
Loomahk's eyes welled with tears. Emotion drove his voice upward, almost to a puppy's whine. "I love you, Doe. Always remember I do."
"Love is sacrifice," Fahree interrupted, and Doe, cradling the side of Loomahk's face in her hand, felt his jaw clench. "It requires you to give up what you love. Can you face that test?"
Loomahk's eyes flashed. He fixed his stare on Fahree, but Fahree just shook his head slowly. The wolf opened his mouth to speak, but then he slumped down as though carrying a terrific weight. "Fahree is right," he mumbled. "Re is asking me to give you up, Doe, and I don't know if I am strong enough to do that."
Doe hugged him, hoping to send strength back. She got up and walked on. Fahree and Loomahk followed behind, speaking to each other in a language shared by wolves and foxes.
"But she should know the sacrifice she is asked to make," Loomahk was protesting. "It will not be worth anything unless it is done by her choice."
"Her kind doesn't understand how the community is to be protected above the individual," the fox replied. "The chance she will accept her proper fate is slim. Don't fool yourself, Loomahk. I know why you want to warn her. You want to redeem yourself in her eyes. You can't stand to think she will die thinking you have betrayed her. Your motive is selfish, and will only cause her more pain."
And so they reached the village. Apparently Voortahn had sent word ahead of their arrival. A judge was waiting for them, and the priest.
"This is the girl who is responsible for last night's fire?" the judge asked.
Doe turned wildly to Loomahk. "All will be well," he said again.
She turned to the judge. "The fire came here?"
"The fire killed five villagers."
She shut her eyes tight so the world spun. "I didn't know."
"You are responsible?"
"Yes."
"You know the penalty?"
One last time she faced Loomahk, who had bent his face low and would not look up. She had never been temperate. It was in her power to turn great love into great hatred. "You will be night to me from now on. I want you to know that. You will be the night I died. Was that what you wanted?"
He moaned low and deep.
"Since you have admitted your crime, we have no need for a trial," the judge was saying.
With her mindís voice Doe was screaming, ěRe--stay in the sky a little longer! Keep this night from coming!î
But her mindís ears heard a calm answer from some part of her that saw things the rest of her could not. ěYou know better than to ask that. The Rahs say that Re is their Good Predator. Why would the Hawklion keep a wolf from his prey?î
In her ears a roar of blood, and the voice of the old fox with his huge smile. "Sing it and you will never be afraid." The smile in his voice, a smile she felt as welcome, when someone else suspected he was mocking her. As the sword bit her neck, she sang what he had taught her.
Kee Re--sun in the east--lorhn ah sahn--hawk and lion--lehn sohn--protect our dreams.
Kee Re, lorhn ah sahn,
Kee Re, lehn sohn.