White Wolf by David Gemmell Page A

of the vision filling his mind. Lighting a lantern he moved to his small writing desk, spread open a section of parchment and took up a quill pen. As swiftly as he could before the vision faded he wrote it down. Then he sat back, exhausted and trembling. His mouth was dry and he filled a goblet with water. In the days of his youth he could hold the visions in his head, examining them until all was revealed. Now he could barely sketch out the broadest lines of them before they dissolved.
    He stared down at what he had written.
A gentle hound, scarred by fire, had become a snarling wolf, dangerous and deadly. The beast had lifted its head and lightning had forked up from its mouth, striking the sky with great power. This had caused a massive storm. The sea reared up in a huge tidal wave and swept toward a rocky island. Atop the island was a shrine.
The last word Cethelin had scrawled was
Candle
. He remembered then that a single candle was burning on the beach of the island, its tiny flame bright against the onrushing darkness of the colossal wave.
    Cethelin could make no sense of the hound-wolf, but he knew that the tide always represented humanity. The angry sea was the mob in the town, and the shrine was the church. Lantern was right. The mob would be coming with hatred in their hearts. Could a candle of love turn them from thoughts of murder? Cethelin doubted it.
    The three-legged hound limped in from the bedroom and sat beside the abbot. Cethelin stroked its head. “You are not a wolf, my boy,” he said. “And you have chosen a poor place to seek safety.”
    Rabalyn entered the small cottage and closed the door quietly. Inserting the wooden plug that locked the latch, he wandered through to the small living room. Aunt Athyla was dozing in the chair by the fire. In her lap were several balls of brightly colored wool, and by her feet lay around a dozen knitted squares. Rabalyn moved through to the kitchen and cut himself some bread. Returning to the fire he took up the brass toasting fork, thrust a slice of bread onto it, and held it close to the coals. There had been no butter for some weeks now, but the toasted bread still tasted fine to a young man who had not eaten that day. He glanced across at Aunt Athyla as he ate. A large woman in her late fifties, she had never married, and yet she had been a mother to two generations of the family. Her own parents had died when she was just fifteen—only a little younger than Rabalyn was now. Athyla had worked to raise four sisters and a brother. They were all gone now, and only rarely did she hear from any of them. Rabalyn’s own mother had deserted the family four years ago, leaving two children in the care of the time-worn spinster.
    He gazed fondly at the sleeping woman. Her hair was mostly gray, and her legs were swollen with rheumatism. Her knuckles, too, were slightly deformed by arthritis, yet she labored on daily without complaint. Rabalyn sighed. When younger he dreamed of becoming rich and repaying Aunt Athyla for her kindness, perhaps buying her a fine house, with servants. Now he knew such a gift would bring her no joy. Athyla did not desire servants. He wondered if she truly desired anything at all. Her long life had been filled with duties and responsibilities she had not asked for, yet had accepted. She had only one piece of jewelry, a small silver pendant that she unconsciously stroked when worried. Rabalyn had asked her about it and she said only that someone had given it to her a long time ago. Aunt Athyla did not engage in long conversations and her reminiscences were abrupt and to the point. As were her criticisms. “Just like your mother,” she would say, if Rabalyn left any food upon his plate. “Think of those starving children in Panthia.”
    “How do you know they are starving in Panthia?” he would ask.
    “Always starving in Panthia,” she would say. “It’s a known fact.”
    Old Labbers had later explained that forty years earlier a severe