Everything inside the bag remained dry, but I found no gifts worthy of a queen.
More like what I’d call—I don’t know exactly. Survivalist supplies? Heavy scissors in a leather sheath, a solar-powered flashlight, a neat little bundle of rope, thermal underwear, a huge container of all-purpose camp soap, a small square of nylon labeled insTENT, that knife from the armorer that I’dtried to leave behind, and heaps of gold coins and precious gems. Exactly what you’d pack for someone you were sending into an unfamiliar wilderness with no guarantee of safe lodging.
Useful. Thoughtful.
But there was no unbinding spell to get me back to my time. No effing note to tell me why they’d done this to me.
I tipped that bag upside down, just to make extra sure.
A key came tumbling out and clanged on the stone floor.
It was huge, like it was made for a much, much larger hand. Bronze maybe, and deeply burnished. The bow at the top had been wrought into something that looked disturbingly like the skull of some kind of spiky beast, its eye sockets flanking a single oval emerald gemstone. The shaft was thick and heavily engraved—geometric lines and what might have been scales or armor plating or both. And at the bottom, the bit was cut into a blocky, almost mechanical pattern.
I picked it up, and it felt heavy in my hand—pounds not grams like the one to our house in Faoiltiarn. It was unlike any other key I’d ever seen. Then my eyes caught something under the grotto bath’s low light.
Something was etched into the giant key’s shaft. Three words…
finnt mei tür
Wait…wait…My breath caught. Because I recognized these words, even though they were in a language I hadn’t seen written out since I was twelve.
My heart stuttered. Then soared.
Wölfennite. The words were written in Wölfennite.
finnt mei tür
Translation: Find my door.
Door
Zone 2,Pleistocene age
Damianos strode back and forth across the glen in his true form, observing the five upright hominid bodies the Zone 2 wolves had gathered for their god’s daily meal.
He'd been training the father wolves in small groups to perform this ritual for around four rotations now, so they would learn on a biological level to properly worship their overlords. And he believed this latest generation had finally internalized how to time their offerings by the position of the sun in the sky.
The five father wolves in this rotation’s cohort each kneeled in the snow next to a tree, in front of which sat the fresh carcass of a human they’d caught, efficiently killed, and then set up for presentation against the trunk.
Damianos could see why the Royal Geneticist had chosen the wolves over the bears as their race’s assistants for the hunt that was scheduled to take place in a little less than 1000 more rotations around the fire star.
The bears were smarter, but the wolves were neater. There were no unsightly face maulings, accidental decapitations, or missing limbs. Only the gashes in the humans’ ripped outthroats indicated that they were dead and not simply sitting against a tree with their eyes wide open.
“Good… good… slightly askew but acceptable…”Damianos said into each of the father wolves’ heads as he passed by their presentation tree.“Good… what is this?”
Damianos stopped abruptly at the last human, a male with long hair and a thick beard that would most likely give him indigestion if he didn’t bite his head off before consuming the rest of his carcass.
That was not the cause of Damianos’s disgusted halt, though. The male was slumped over on his side. Not neat at all.
He godspoke to the wolf kneeling beside the tree with the poorly presented body.“What have you done, foul beast? This is most displeasing.”
The wolf raised his supplicant head just enough to see that the male had fallen over.
His eyes widened, and he immediately began making excuses and pleading for his pitiful life.
“God… god… mercy… god… please… I have mate and two boy who become good hunter wolf for you after me!” he begged with those disgusting simian grunts and hand signs that the upright hominid hybrids used to communicate with one another.
However, Damianos was not in a forgiving mood this eve. Really, any eve.
