Probably something not very nice, judging from his expression, but he swallowed it back, intellect taking over from temper, as it always did with him.
Shit.I knew this was going to happen.And so did Cyrus, who scowled.
“Úlfhe´dinn,” Sebastian said, rolling the word over his tongue, and giving it the proper, Old Icelandic pronunciation of OOLF-heth-inn.“The wolf warrior.”
“Úlfhéðnar,”Cyrus corrected, using the plural form, which sounded like OOLF-heth-nar.“There were once said to be many—”
“But not now.Now, the skill of the great captains of our people is lost.To the point that we don’t even know why they were so renowned—and so feared.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“Or perhaps we do,” sharp blue eyes narrowed on my face.“Perhaps Lia has just shown us.”
“We don’t even know for certain that she has it,” Cyrus argued, because he didn’t seem to like my explanation.“Much less what it can do—”
“We don’t?”His brother, so angry a moment ago, was all cold intelligence now.It was the most frightening thing about him, just how smart Sebastian was.And how little he missed.“We saw her at Wolf’s Head use a cry no one in living memory had heard to force a Change on the wolves menacing that young girl—what was her name?”
“Jen,” I said hoarsely.
“Yes, when the Council was under the sway of that idiot Whirlwind, to the point of allowing an attack on a child!”The child in question was technically an adult, if only barely, and as scary as anybody on the Council, but I didn’t mention that.Because he was on a roll, his blue eyes suddenly burning with some emotion I couldn’t name.“Lia yelled, and some of the council’s best troops Changed back into their human form, and a forced Change is often debilitating.They couldn’t attack her student after that, not for hours, just as theÚlfhéðnarare said to have been able to do—”
“Which doesn’t have anything to do with today!”Cyrus said, but his brother cut him off.
“—but this… this could be even better.”
Sebastian left his desk and began pacing, which for him was the equivalent of someone else jumping up and down.Unlike Cyrus and me, he liked this idea.He liked it a lot.
“She called, and they answered, people who didn’t know her, who had no loyalty to her.Quite the contrary, as she was dressed as a war mage, whom the people in Tartarus have long had reason to fear and dislike.Yet they fought for her nonetheless—”
“They were angry,” Ulmer put in, frowning.“The Black Circle bastards had rounded them up like animals and put ‘em in cages—and roughed many of them up in the process.They had reason to want some payback.”
“Yet before that call, most of them had not been fighting,” Sebastian countered.“From the reports I received, the majority ran, as one might expect.That is what people do in such cases, especiallyvargulfs, who have learned to avoid conflict with no clan to back them up.
“But when Lia called, they turned around, some from a considerable distance.They were safe, they were free; the last thing they should have wanted was to return to a dire situation!But return they did.
“What if it wasn’t a choice?”
“What are you saying?”Cyrus asked.
“I’m saying that some of those who returned might have even had run-ins with the Corps—in fact, many of them might!And those had little reason to see much difference between Lia and the Black Circle’s mages.Yet theyfought for her.
“What if Rand might do the same?What if her ability allows her to steal the servants of the enemy, rally his own army against him—”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it?The old records are spotty at best, and oral tradition is contradictory.No one alive has seen anÚlfhe´dinn,who died out centuries ago.But if that potion truly brought back such a gift—”
“It didn’t,” I said.“Not like that, anyway.They rallied to me, but because they wanted to.”
“And you know this how?”
I heard it in their blood, I didn’t say, because people were already looking at me like I might be crazy.“They’d been alone for so long,” I said instead.“Alone and helpless, as no wolf should ever be.It was why they were taken so easily by the dark.Until we showed up and set them free, and offered them a chance to unite, to fight back, and in a pack again—”
“You offered them nothing,” Ulmer growled.“You didn’t have a chance to.You called; they came.Don’t make it more than it was.”
“I’m not making it anything,” I said, trying to keep my temper.“But we were already fighting, other wolves included, some of those Jen had released.Others would have liked to join in, but they didn’t have a leader or anyone to help them.So they ran—until I called and they realized that maybe they finally did have a way to fight back.”
But Sebastian didn’t look convinced.
